ArchitecturalPress

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GORDON CULLEN

ISBN 0-7506-2018-8

9 '780750"620'.1

Gordon Cullen worked for two London architectural firms,

and as an illustrator and exhibition designer in Britain and

the West Indies before becoming assistant editor of TheArchiuaural Review just after the Second World War. The

drawings and articles on civic design which he produced

during this period attracted wide attention, both for their

ideas and their style of presentation Sin"e 1956 he has

been in practice as a townscape c( Z erof British cities and local authoriti Ford

Foundation team developing plan~ I

Calcutta. He was made an Honor £21. 99 oyalInstitute of British Architects in 1970.

An imprint of Elsevier

www.architeeturalpress.ccm

Architectural Press

mELSEVIER

The Concise TOWNS CAPE

"Townscape" is the art of giving visual coherence and organisation to

the jumble of buildings, streets and spaces that make up the urban

environment. Its concepts were first developed by Gordon Cullen in The

Architedura/ Review and were later embodied in the book TOWNS CAPE

(1961) which instantly established itself as a major influence cn

architects, planners and others concerned with what cities should

look like. Its interest, however, goes far beyond the professional

sphere. Some may see it as an important contribution to art and archi­

tectural history since, for the first time, it explores the fact that certain

visual effects in the grouping of buildings were based on quite definable,

if often spontaneous, aesthetic principles. Others may find that it teaches

them to appreciate, as no other book has done, what it is that makes a

town "work" architecturally. A third group may want to study it for

Cullen's superb drawings of city scenery - a skill at which he is the

acknowledged master. The fascination of this book is endless for anyone

who has any kind of visual sense.

In this shortened version, the studies of specific towns have been left outand instead Cullen has contributed a new foreword and conclusion which

set his ideas in the context of the seventies.

TOWNSCAPEThe Concise

Gordon Cullen

Althi"",tuJ1lJ

Press

mArchitectural Press is an imprint of Elsevier

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ELSEVIER

Architectural Press is an imprint of ElsevierLinacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA

First edition published by The Architectural Press 1961Paperback edition 1971Reprinted 1994, 1996, 1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,20032004 (twice), 2005, 2006

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CONTENTS

6 Acknowledgements7 Introduction

13 Introduction to 1971 Edition

Casebook

17 Serial vision21 Place

57 Content

87 The functional tradition

General Studies

97 Squares for all tastes

103 Cross as focal point106 Closure

II I Line oflife

121 Legs and wheels

123 Hazards128 The floor

132 Prairie planning

140 Rule of thumb

144 Street lighting

151 Outdoor publicity155 The wall

162 The English climate

164 Casebook precedents168 Trees incorporated

175 Change oflevel182 Here and there

188 Immediacy

193 Endpiece

197 Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks the following for permission to reproduce photographs: Aerofilmson pages 46 bottom, 136 top left, 139 top; Agenzia Alinari, Rome, page 72, bottomright; the Architectural Re'view pages 26 top, 39 top, 41, 42 bottom, 44 both, 50 top andbottom right, 65 top, 70 top, 71 both, 75 top, 81 bottom, 93 bottom, 104, 123-6, 133 topand centre, 134 all except top left, 135, 136 all except top left, 145, 146 two bottom andcentre right, 148, 149 top, and for illustrations by the following photographers: Dell &Wainwright page 18 left column, 40 top left, 78 top; Dewar Mills page 194 top; L deWolfe page 22 top, 23 bottom, 24 top and bottom left, 38, 51 both, 53 top, 54 top rightand bottom right, 6I top, 76 both, 94 centre left, 103 bottom, 107-8, 109 top, IlO, 129­131,158 bottom left, 159 bottom, 161 bottom left, 177, 178 top and centre left, I81 both,189-92, H.de Burgh Galwey pages 31 top, 32 bottom, 40 centre left, 58 top two, 61 bot­tom, 64 bottom, 79 bottom right, 87 right, 88 three bottom, and centre middle and right,89 two bottom, 90 two bottom, 94 bottom right, 96 centre left, Il2-6, 141-3, 178 topright, 179; Hastings page 96 right of centre and bottom centre; John Maltby page 40bottom right; Ian McCallum pages 29 bottom left, 30 bottom, 36 bottom, 52 both, 53bottom, 64 top, 68 bottom, 69 bottom, 82 bottom, 87 top left, 88 centre left, 90 top, 92top, 94 centre right, 96 top centre and right, 158 top right, 160 two top, 161 top left,171 top, 172, 176, 178 centre right; Ian Nairn pages 34 bottom, 35 top, 36 top, 47 right,57 bottom, 58 second from bottom, 69 top, 73 top, 74 bottom; J M.Richards pages 79top, 87 bottom left, 90 centre, 95 top two left and bottom right, 90 top left, 161 top right;Sylvia Sayer page 60 top; W. J, Toomey pages 56, 58 bottom, 146 top right; also BlackStar page 151 bottom; Oscar Bladh page 27 left; Charles Borup page 96 bottom right;Cracknell page 173 top; D'Andre Vigneau page 37 bottom; Eric de Mare pages 21, 23top left, 46 top, 49 bottom, 66 top, 88 top left, 89 top; Entwistle page 78 bottom left;Fox Photos page 109 bottom; Marcel Gautherot pages 169-70; General Electric Co. page146 top left; Hedrich Blessing page 161 bottom left; Hobbs, Ofen & Co. page 149 twobottom; Jack Howe page 188; H. Dennis Jones page 22 bottom; Jose do PatrocinioAndrade page 158 bottom right; C. and S. Kestin page 83 bottom; G. E. Kidder Smithpages 33 bottom, 83 top, 168 right, 171 bottom, 173 bottom, 174 both; Herbert Listpage 81 top left; Millar and Harris pages 42 top; the National Gallery page 28; S. WNewbery page 82 top; Cas Oorthuys page 23 right (reproduced from This is London,published by Bruno Cassirer); Photoflight page 134 top left; John Piper page 66bottom, 95 bottom left; Poles Ltd., Birmingham page 146 centre left; Paul Popper page168 centre left; Press and Publicity Photographic Co. page 139 bottom; A. E. Raddypages Il7, Il9, 158 top left; Radio Times Hulton Picture Library page 48 bottom;Roads Campaign Council page 27 right; L. Sievking page 73 botto!p.; A. R. Sinsabaughpage 68 top; Spectrocolour page 96 bottom left; R. Stallard page 40 bottom left; Struwingpage 37 top; The Times pages 47 left, 57 centre, 59 bottom, 77 both; Reece Winstonepage 26 bottom. The remainder of the photographs were taken by the author.

All the drawings are by the author, but he would like to thank the Cambridge UniversityPress for permission to reproduce the drawing on page 35 which appears in The town ofCambridge as it ought to be Refonned by David Roberts; and Messrs Methuen for thedrawing on page 80 which is reproduced from A Wanderer in Londoll by Ebbe Sadolin.

6

INTRODUCTION

There are advantages to be gained from the gathering together of peopleto form a town. A single family living in the country can scarcely hopeto drop into a theatre, have a meal out or browse in a library, whereasthe same family living in a town can enjoy these amenities. The littlemoney that one family can afford is multiplied by thousands and so acollective amenity is made possible. A city is more than the sum of itsinhabitants. It has the power to generate a surplus of amenity, which isone reason why people like to live in communities rather than in isolation.

Now turn to the visual impact which a city has on those who live init or visit it. I wish to show that an argument parallel to the one putforward above holds good for buildings: bring people together and theycreate a collective surplus of enjoyment; bring buildings together andcollectively they can give visual pleasure which none can give separately.

One building standing alone in the countryside is experienced as awork of architecture, but bring half a dozen buildings together and anart other than architecture is made possible. Several things begin tohappen in the group which would be impossible for the isolated building.We may walk through and past the buildings, and as a corner is turnedan unsuspected building is suddenly revealed. We may be surprised,even astonished (a reaction generated by the composition of the groupand not by the individual building). Again, suppose that the buildingshave been put together in a group so that one can get inside the group,then the space created between the buildings is seen to have a life of itsown over and above the buildings which create it and one's reaction isto say 'I am inside IT' or 'I am entering IT'. Note also that in this groupof half a dozen buildings there may be one which through reason offunction does not conform. It may be a bank, a temple or a churchamongst houses. Suppose that we are just looking at the temple by itself,it would stand in front of us and all its qualities, size, colour and in­tricacy, would be evident. But put the temple back amongst the smallhouses and immediately its size is made more real and more obvious bythe comparison between the two scales. Instead of being a big temple itTOWERS. The difference in meaning between bigness and towering is themeasure of the relationship.

In fact there is an art of relationship just as there is an art of archi­tecture. Its purpose is to take all the elements that go to create the

7

environment: buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements andso on, and to weave them together in such a way that drama is released.For a city is a dramatic event in the environment. Look at the researchthat is put into making a city work: demographers, sociologists, engineers,traffic experts; all co-operating to torm the myriad factors into a work­able, viable and healthy organization. It is a tremendous human under­taking.

And yet ... if at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninterestingand soulless, then it is not fulfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has beenlaid but nobody has put a match to it.

Firstly we have to rid ourselves of the thought that the excitementand drama that we seek can be born automatically out of the scientificresearch and solutions arrived at by the technical man (or the technicalhalf of the brain). We naturally accept these solutions, but are notentirely bound by them. In fact we cannot be entirely bound by thembecause the scientific solution is based on the best that can be made of

the average: of averages of human behaviour, averages of weather,factors of safety an": so on. And these averages do not give an inevitableresult for any particular problem. They are, so to speak, wandering factswhich may synchronize or, just as likely, may conflict with each other.The upshot is that a town could take one of several patterns and stilloperate with success, equal success. Here then we discover a pliabilityin the scientific solution and it is precisely in the manipulation of thispliability that the art of relationship is made possible. As will be seen, theaim is not to dictate the shape of the town or environment, but is amodest one: simply to manipulate within the tolerances.

This means that we can get no further help from the scientificattitude and that we must therefore turn to other values and otherstandards.

We turn to the faculty of sight, for it is almost entirely through visionthat the environment is apprehended. If someone knocks at your doorand you open it to let him in, it sometimes happens that a gust of windcomes in too, sweeping round the room, blowing the curtains and makinga great fuss. Vision is somewhat the same; we often get more than webargained for. Glance at the clock to see the time and you see the wall­paper, the clock's carved brown mahogany frame, the fly crawling overthe glass and the delicate rapier-like pointers. Cezanne might have madea painting of it. In fact, of course, vision is not only useful but it evokesour memories and experiences, those responsive emotions inside uswhich have the power to disturb the mind when aroused. It is this un­looked-for surplus that we are dealing with, for clearly if the environment8

is going to produce an emotional reaction, with or without our volition, itis up to us to try to understand the three ways in which this happens.

1. Concerning OPTICS. Let us suppose that we are walking through atown: here is a straight road off which is a courtyard, at the far side ofwhich another street leads out and bends slightly before reaching amonument. Not very unusual. We take this path and our first view isthat of the street. Upon turning into the courtyard the new view isrevealed instantaneously at the point of turning, and this view remainswith us whilst we walk across the courtyard. Leaving the courtyard weenter the further street. Again a new view is suddenly revealed althoughwe are travelling at a uniform speed. Finally as the road bends themonument swings into view. The significance of all this is that althoughthe pedestrian walks through the town at a uniform speed, the scenery oftowns is often revealed in a series of jerks or revelations. This we callSERIAL VISION.

Examine what this means. Our original aim is to manipulate theelements of the town so that an impact on the emotions is achieved.A long straight road has little impact because the initial view is soondigested and becomes monotonous. The human mind reacts to a con­trast, to the difference between things, ann when two pictures (the streetand the courtyard) are in the mind at the same time, a vivid contrast isfelt and the town becomes visible in a deeper sense. It comes alivethrough the drama of juxtaposition. Unless this happens the town willslip past us featureless and inert.

There is a further observation to be made concerning Serial Vision.Although from a scientific or commercial point of view the town may bea unity, from our optical viewpoint we have split it into two elements:the existing view and the emerging view. In the normal way this is anaccidental chain of events and whatever significance may arise out of thelinking of views will be fortuitous. Suppose, however, that we take overthis linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding atool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into acoherent drama. The process of manipulation has begun to turn theblind facts into a taut emotional situation.

2. Concerning PLACE. This second point is concerned with ourreactions to the position of our body in its environment. This is as simpleas it appears to be. It means, for instance, that when you go into a roomyou utter to yourself the unspoken words 'I am outside IT, I am enteringIT, I am in the middle of IT' . At this level of consciousness we are dealingwith a range of experience stemming from the major impacts of exposureand enclosure (which if taken to their morbid extremes result in the

9

symptoms of agoraphobia and claustrophobia). Place a man on the edgeof a 500-ft. cliff and he will have a very lively sense of position, put himat the end of a deep cave and he will react to the fact of enclosure.

Since it is an instinctive and continuous habit of the body to relateitself to the environment, this sense of position cannot be ignored; itbecomes a factor in the design of the environment (just as an additionalsource of light must be reckoned with by a photographer, howeverannoying it may be). I would go further and say that it should beexploited.

Here is an example. Suppose you are visiting one of the hill towns inthe south of France. You climb laboriously up the winding road andeventually find yourself in a tiny village street at the summit. You feelthirsty and go to a nearby restaurant, your drink is served to you on averanda and as you go out to it you find to your exhilaration or horrorthat the veranda is cantilevered out over a thousand-foot drop. By thisdevice of the containment (street) and the revelation (cantilever) thefact of height is dramatized and made real.

In a town we do not normally have such a dramatic situation to mani­pulate but the principle still holds good. There is, for instance, a typicalemotional reaction to being below the general ground level and there isanother resulting from being above it. There is a reaction to beinghemmed in as in a tunnel and another to the wideness of the square. If,therefore, we design our towns from the point of view of the movingperson (pedestrian or car-borne) it is easy to see how the whole citybecomes a plastic experience, a journey through pressures and vacuums,a sequence of exposures and enclosures, of constraint and relief.

Arising out of this sense of identity or sympathy with the environ­ment, this feeling of a person in street or square that he is in I T orentering IT or leaving IT, we discover that no sooner do we postulate aHERE than automatically we must create a THERE, for you cannot haveone without the other. Some of the greatest towns cape effects arecreated by a skilful relationship between the two, and I will name an

example in India, where this introduction is being written: the approachfrom the Central Vista to the Rashtrapathi Bhawan1 in New Delhi.There is an open-ended courtyard composed of the two Secretariatbuildings and, at the end, the Rashtrapathi Bhawan. All this is raisedabove normal ground level and the approach is by a ramp. At the topof the ramp and in front of the axis building is a tall screen of railings.This is the setting. Travelling through it from the Central Vista we seethe two Secretariats in full, but the Rashtrapathi Bhawan is partiallyI The President's Residence, latelv Vicere~a1 Lodge.

10

hidden by the ramp; only its upper part is visible. This effect of trunca­tion serves to isolate and make remote. The building is withheld. We areHere and it is There. As we climb the ramp the Rashtrapathi Bhawan is

gradually revealed, the mystery culminates in fulfilment as it becomesimmediate to us, standing on the same floor. But at this point the railing,the wrought iron screen, is inserted; which again creates a form of Hereand There by means of the screened vista. A brilliant, if painfully con­ceived, sequence2 (illustration, page 20).

3. Concerning CONTENT. In this last category we turn to an examina­tion of the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale, style, character,

personality and uniqueness. Accepting the fact that most towns are ofold foundation, their fabric will show evidence of differing periods in itsarchitectural styles and also in the various accidents of layout. Manytowns do so display this mixture of styles, materials and scales.

Yet there exists at the back of our minds a feeling that could we only

start again we would get rid of this hotchpotch and make all new andfine and perfect. We would create an orderly scene with straight roadsand with buildings that conformed in height and style. Given a free handthat is what we might do ... create symmetry, balance, perfection andconformity. Mter all, that is the popular conception of the purpose oftown planning.

But what is this conformity? Let us approach it by a simile. Let ussuppose a party in a private house, where are gathered together half adozen people who are strangers to each other. The early part of theevening is passed in polite conversation on general subjects such as theweather and the current news. Cigarettes are passed and lights offeredpunctiliously. In fact it is all an exhibition of manners, of how one oughtto behave. It is also very boring. This is conformity. However, later onthe ice begins to break and out of the straightjacket of orthodox mannersand conformity real human beings begin to emerge. It is found thatMiss X's sharp but good-natured wit is just the right foil to Major Y'ssomewhat simple exuberance. And so on. It begins to be fun. Conform­ity gives way to the agreement to differ within a recognized tolerance ofbehaviour.

Conformity, from the point of view of the planner, is difficult to avoidbut to avoid it deliberately, by creating artificial diversions, is surelyworse than the original boredom. Here, for instance, is a programme torehouse 5,000 people. They are all treated the same, they get the samekind of house. How can one differentiate? Yet if we start from a much

wider point of view we will see that tropical housing differs from tem­'It was the cause of bitterness between Lutyens and Baker.

II

perate zone housing, that buildings in a brick country differ frombuildings in a stone country, that religion and social manners vary thebuildings. And as the field of observation narrows, so our sensitivity tothe local gods must grow sharper. There is too much insensitivity in thebuilding of towns, too much reliance on the tank and the armoured carwhere the telescopic rifle is wanted.

Within a commonly accepted framework-one that produces lucidityand not anarchy-we can manipulate the nuances of scale and style, oftexture and colour and of character and individuality, juxtaposing themin order to create collective benefits. In fact the environment thus re­solves itself into not conformity but the interplay of This and That.

It is a matter of observation that in a successful contrast of colours not

only do we experience the harmony released but, equally, the coloursbecome more truly themselves. In a large landscape by Corot, I forgetits name, a landscape of sombre greens, almost a monochrome, there is asmall figure in red. It is probably the reddest thing I have ever seen.

Statistics are abstracts: when they are plucked out of the complete­ness of life and converted into plans and the plans into buildings theywill be lifeless. The result will be a three-climensional diagram in whichpeople are asked to live. In trying to colonize such a wasteland, to trans­late it from an environment for walking stomachs into a home for humanbeings, the difficulty lay in finding the point of application, in finding thegateway into the castle. We discovered three gateways, that of motion,that of position and that of content. By the exercise of vision it becameapparent that motion was not one simple, measurable progression usefulin planning, it was in fact two things, the Existing and the Revealed view.We discovered that the human being is constantly aware of his positionin the environment, that he feels the need for a sense of place and thatthis sense of identity is coupled with an awareness of elsewhere. Con­formity killed, whereas the agreement to differ gave life. In this way thevoid of statistics, of the diagram city, has been split into two parts,whether they be those of Serial Vision, Here and There or This and That.

All that remains is to join them together into a new pattern created bythe warmth and power and vitality of human imagination so that webuild the home of man.

That is the theory of the game, the background. In fact the mostdifficult part lies ahead, the Art of Playing. As in any other game thereare recognized gambits and moves built up from experience and pre­cedent. In the pages that follow an attempt is made to chart these movesunder the three main heads as a series of cases

New Delhi 1959

INTRODUCTION TO 1971 EDITION

In writing an introduction to this edition of Townscape I find little toalter in the attitude expressed in the original introduction written tenyears ago.

It has been said that a new edition of Townscape should rely on modern

work for its examples instead of these being culled from the past. Thishas not been done for two reasons.

Firstly the task of finding the sharp little needles in the vast haystack ofpost-war building would be quite uneconomical. This leads to the secondpoint, why should it be so difficult? Because, in my view, the originalmessage of Townscape has not been delivered effectively.

We have witnessed a superficial civic style of decoration using bollardsand cobbles, we have seen traffic-free pedestrian precincts and we havenoted the rise of conservation.

But none of these is germane to townscape. The sadness of the situa­tion is that the superficials have become the currency but the spirit, theEnvironment Game itself, is still locked away in its little red and gilt box.

The position may indeed have deteriorated over the last ten years forreasons which are set out below.

Man meets environment: unfamiliarity, shock, ugliness and boredomaccording to what kind of man you are. The problem is not new but isthis generation getting more than its fair share? Yes. Reason? Thereason i.nmy view is the speed of change which has disrupted the normalcommunication between planner and planee. The list is familiar enough:more people, more houses, more amenities, faster communications andunfamiliar building methods.

The speed of change prevents the environment organisers from settlingdown and learning by experience how to humanise the raw materialthrown at them. In consequence the environment is ill-digested. Londonis suffering from indigestion. The gastric juices, as represented by plan­ners, have not been able to break down all the vast chunks of hastilyswallowed stodge into emotional nutriment. We may be able to do manythings our grandparents could not do but we cannot digest any faster.The process, be it in stomach or brain, is part of our human bondage.And so we have to make organisational changes in order that humanscale can be brought into effective contact with the forces of develop­ment.

13

The criticalpoint where thebig columnlets theslender columnpass

14

The first change is to popularise the art of environment on the princi­ple that the game improves with the amount of popular emotion investedand this is the crux of the situation. The stumbling block here is that inthe popular mind administrative planning is dull, technical and forbid­ding whilst good planning is conceived as a wide, straight street withbushy-topped trees on either side, full stop. On the contrary! The waythe environment is put together is potentially one of our most excitingand widespread pleasure sources. It is no use complaining of uglinesswithout realising that the shoes that pinch are really a pair of ten­league boots.

How to explain? Example: the nearest to hand at the time of writing isSees cathedral near Alen'Y0n,p.I4. The Gothic builders were fascinated bythe problem of weight, how to support the culmination of their structures,the vault, and guide its weight safely down to earth. In this buildingweight has been divided into two parts. The walls are supported bysturdy cylindrical columns: the vault itself, the pride of the endeavour,appears to be supported on fantastically attenuated applied columnswhich act almost as lightning conductors .of gravity between heaven andthe solid earth. The walls are held up by man, the vault is clearly heldup by angels. 'I understand weight, I am strong', 'I have overcomeweight, I am ethereal'. 'We both spring from the same earth together, weneed each other'. Through the centuries they commune together inserenity.

As soon as the game or dialogue is understood the whole place beginsto shake hands with you. It bursts all through the dull business of whodid what and when and who did it first. We know who did it, it was a chapwith a twinkle in his eye.

This is the Environment Game and it is going on all round us. Youwill see that I am not discussing absolute values such as beauty, perfec­tion, art with a big A, or morals. I am trying to describe an environmentthat chats away happily, plain folk talking together. Apart from a handfulof noble exceptions our world is being filled with system-built dumbblondes and a scatter ofIrish confetti. Only when the dialogue commenceswill people stop to listen.

Until such happy day arrives when people in the street throw theircaps in the air at the sight of a planner (the volume of sardonic laughteris the measure of your deprivation) as they now do for footballers andpop singers, a holding operation in two parts will be necessary.

First, streaming the environment. It is difficult to fight for a generalprinciple, easier to protect the particular. By breaking down the environ­ment into its constituent parts the ecologist can fight for his national

15

parks, local authority for its green belts, antiquarians for conservationareas and so on. This is already happening.

Second, the time scaling of these streams. Change, of itself, is oftenresented even if it can be seen to be a change for the better. Continuityis a desirable characteristic of cities. Consequently while planning con­sent in a development stream might be automatic one may have to expecta built-in delay often or even twenty years in an important conservationarea. This is not necessarily to improve the design but simply to slowdown the process. This also is happening, if grudgingly, in the case ofPiccadilly Circus.

But the main endeavour is for the environment makers to reach their

public, not democratically but emotionally. As the great Max Milleronce remarked across the footlights on a dull evening 'I know you're outthere, I can hear you breathing'.

r6

CASEBOOK: SERIAL VISION

To walk from one end of the plan toanother, at a uniform pace, will pro­vide a sequence of revelations whichare suggested in the serial drawingsopposite, reading from left to right.Each arrow on the plan represents adrawing. The even progress of travelis illumi'lated by a series of suddencontrasts and so an impact is madeon the eye, bringing the plan to life(like nudging a man who is going tosleep in church). My drawings bearno relation to the place itself; I chose itbecause it seemed an evocativeplan. Note that the slightest deviationin alignment and quite small varia­tions in projections or setbacks onplan have a disproportionally power­ful effect in the third dimension.

17

19

5

4

3

Plan of Westminster, showing6,7 viewpoints

WESTMINSTER These three sequences, Oxford,Ipswich and Westminster, try to re­capture in the limited and staticmedium of the printed page a little ofthe sense of discovery and drama thatwe experience in moving throughtowns. Oxford; the cube, I, the drum,3, and the cone, 4, create an unfolding

1 drama of solid geometry. This is theunfolding of a mystery, the sense thatas you press on more is revealed.Ipswich; a modest archway performsthe office of dividing the prospectinto two things, the street you are inand the place beyond, into which youemerge so that you move out of one

l) ambience into another. \Xlestminster;~ the shifting interplay of towers, spires

and masts, all the intricacy of freshalignments and grouping, the shaftsof penetration and the sudden bunch­ing of emphatic verticals into adramatic knot, these are the rewardsof the moving eye, but an eyewhich is open and not lazy.

3, 4

1) 2

OXFORD

IPSWtCH

20

~

The sequence in New Delhi (readthe photographs from left to right) em­phasizes the role of levels and screen­ing in serial vision, for here whatcould simply have been one picturereproduced four times, each viewenlarging the centre of the previousview and bringing US near to theterminal building, turns out to befour separate and unique views (seedescription in the Introduction).

PLACE

possession

In a world of black and white theroads are for movement and the

buildings for social and businesspurposes. Yet since most people dojust what suits them when it suitsthem, we find that the out-of-doorsis culonized for social and business

purposes. Occupied territory, ad­vantage, enclosure, focal point, indoorlandscape, and so on, are all forms ofpossession, as the next seven pagesshow.

occupied territory (facing page)

Shade, shelter, amenity and con­venience are the usual causes ofpossession. The emphasizing of suchplaces by some permanent indicationserves to create an image of thevarious kinds of occupation in thetown, so that instead of a completelystreamlined and fluid out-of-doors amore static and occupied environment

is created, like the ones shown oppositewhere a periodic occupation (chattingafter church )) is woven permanentlyinto the town pattern by means offloorscape. The furniture of possessionincludes floorscape, posts, canopies,enclaves, focal points and enclosures.Although the amount of possessionmay be small yet its perpetuation inthe furniture gives the town humanityand intricacy in just the same waythat louvres on windows give textureand scale to a building even when thesun is not shining.

possession in movementBut static possession is only oneaspect of the human grip on theout-of-doors and the next stage is toconsider possession in movement. Inthe accompanying illustration thechurch walk is a definite thing havinga well-defined beginning and endwith a well-defined character; andthis may be possessed while movingthrough it just as surely as the villagecross may be by a villager sitting onits steps.

23

24

advantage

Again there are lines of advantagewhich can be colonized; the linealong the parapet of a bridge whichpeople seem to prefer for the sake ofthe immediacy of its view and posi­tion is one such (see also line of lifep. III).

viscosity

Where there is a mixture of static

possession and possession in move­ment we find what may be termedviscosity, the formation of groupschatting, of slow window-shoppers,people selling newspapers, flowersand so on. The overhanging blinds,the space enclosed by the portico andthe meandering character of the streetprovide the proper setting which maybe compared to the picture below.Windswept and inhospitable, itemphasizes the segregation ofoutside and inside.

enclaves

The enclave or interior open to theexterior and having free and directaccess from one to the other is seen

here as an accessible place or roomout of the main directional stream,an eddy in which footsteps echo andthe light is lessened in intensity. Setapart from the hurly-burly of traffic,it yet has the advantage of com­manding the scene from a positionof safety and strength.

enclosureEnclosure sums up the polarity oflegs and wheels. It is the basic unitof the precinctual pattern; outside,the noise and speed of impersonalcommunication which comes and goesbut is not of any place. Inside, thequietness and human scale of thesquare, quad or courtyard. This isthe end product of traffic, this is theplace to which traffic brings you.Without enclosure traffic becomesnonsense.

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precinctsLeft, in this significant picture, canbe seen the whole urban pattern as itwas and to some extent still is. Insideis the tightly built-up pedestrian townwith its enclosures and no doubt areasof viscosity, its focal points and en­claves. Outside are the expresswaysfor car and lorry, train and shipwhich exist to serve and vitalize theprecincts. This is the traditionalp~ttern at its clearest. The smallphotograph below shows some ofthese elements at their most dis­organized, the chaotic mixture ofhouses and traffic in which bothpedestrians and traffic suffer a dimi­nution of their proper character.

focal point

Coupled with enclosure (the hOllowobject) as an artifact of possession, isthe focal point, the vertical symbol ofcongregation. In the fertile streetsand market places of town and villageit is the focal point (be it column orcross) which crystallizes the situation,which confirms 'this is the Spot'.'Stop looking, it is here.' This mag­nificent clarity illuminates many acommunity but in many others thechief function of the focal point hasbeen stripped away l:.y the swirl andhazards of traffic so that it becomesmerely an indifferent piece for theantiquarian's notebook.

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sensations are basically interlockedwith human behaviour and theirmorbid expression is demonstratedin claustrophobia and agoraphobia.Enclosure or the outdoor room is,perhaps, the most powerful, the mostobvious, of all the devices to instilthis sense of position, of identitywith the surroundings. It embodiesthe idea of HERENESS (which in thenex t five pages will be seen also toinclude mulriple enclosure, space,looking out, etc.). The two exits tothe same square in Bordeaux, above,provide an object lesson in how topreserve enclosure or how to let thesense of Hereness leak away into theremote distance. Left, a near-perfect example of the outdoor roomwith three-dimensional wallpaper.

the outdoor room and enclosureIn this section of the casebook weare concerned with the person's senseof position, his unspoken reaction tothe environment which might beexpressed as 'I am in IT or above ITor below IT, I am outside IT, I amenclosed or I am exposed'. These

indoor landscape and outdoor room

This is the watetshed. Up to thispoint we have presented the environ­ment as occupied territory serving thelegitimate social and business needsof people and irrigated by trafficroutes. Now arises the natural corol­lary that if the outdoors is colonizedthen the people who do this willattempt to humanize the landscape injust the same way they already do forthe interiors. At this point we canfind little difference between the two,and the terms Indoor Landscape andOutdoor Room make sense. In thetop picture can be seen the patternedpavement (tloorscape) and arcade.Over this is a building in which aman lives whilst the vault of the skyspans over. To the right an avenueof trees leads out to the hills. Herein this picture of an interior is all thespatial quality of a landscape. Below,the diners are gathered togetherunder the ceiling lights and theHouses of Parliament sit on theperimeter like a model on the mantel­piece.

We cannot draw back. If the out­doors is to be colonized architectureis not enough. The outdoors is notjust a display of individual worksof architecture like pictures in a gal­lery, it is an environment for thecomplete human being, who can claimit either statically or in movement.He demands more than a picture gal­lery, he demands the drama thatcan be released all around him fromfloor, sky, buildings, trees and levelsby the art of arrangement.

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multiple enclosure

From simple enclosure it is a step tothe spatial variations which springfrom this fertile form. The illustra­tion shows twO courtyards, the onewe are in and the one beyond,divided by a third enclosure, thecloister. Thus there are three separateenclosures combined into one inter­penetrating whole.

block house

Here the dynamic curves of move­ment are held in suspense by therectangular building which blocksthe exit and so draws a momentarybalafice between enclosure and purefluidity. It does not impede the flowof traffic or people but acts as a markof punctuation or closure (which seeon pp. 45 and 47).

insubstantial spaceBy dissolving the walls of enclosurewith either screen, mirror or illusion,an intangible space is created whichseems to have the property of recedingas one advances and closing up be­hind. The sense of space is notparticularized by the enclosing wallsbut exists throughout like a scentwhich hovers in a particular place.This is probably the most acute ex­pression of that emotive force. Thetwo examples given here, a Londongin palace and the Oxford Museumin Oxford, need little explanationsave to add that in the museum theinstructive skeletons add to thegeneral feeling of interpenetratingspace.

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defining space

It is sometimes astonishing howfragile can be the means of estab­lishing enclosure or space. A wirestretched from wall to wall like apencil stroke, a square of canvasstretched out overhead. In Chandi­garh I saw a bustee, or collection ofmud and thatch dwellings, arrangedin the shade of three large trees alonein the plain. The space thus enclosedby the three trees became the civicspace of the tiny community. Inthese pictures of the French Rivieraand a restaurant at the Festival ofBritain we see how bamboo is usedto establish enclosure and space andhow it achieves that evocative charmof containing whilst revealing whatis beyond.

looking out of enclosure

Having established the fact of Here­ness, the feeling of identity with aplace, it is clear that this cannot existof itself but must automatically createa sense of Thereness, and it is in themanipulation of these two qualitiesthat the spatial drama of relationshipis set up. These two examples de­monstrate the primary reaction; inthe case of Bath, left, the view beyondcomes as an extra dimension and thetrees inside the garden in Swedenhave not the same kind of wildness asthe tree beyond the wall. It is There.

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here and there

The first category of relationships(pinpointing, change of level, vistas,narrows, closure, etc.) is concernedwith the interplay between a knownhere and a known there. The secondcategory, starting on p. 49, will be con­cerned with a known here and anunknown there.

In Nash's Regent's Park terrace,top, the dividing archway serves togive the single composition intricacyand growth. Judging by the in­ordinate height of the archway weare meant to see out of the relativelymodest courtyard up to the noblemain fa<;ade.He is playing off onepart of the composition against theother in order to intensify the totaleffect. My visualization, bottom, ofHawksmoor's plan for Cambridgeincludes this scene looking fromGreat St Mary's along a reformedTrinity Street. Here we are lookingfrom Hawksmoor's great forum intoanother place whose individuality,direction and character is uneq uivo­cally stated by the two monuments.By contrast the street today windsquietly past the Senate House andunobtrusively folds itself away. (Thisis not intended as a choice betweenthe two but only to demonstratethe visual impact of Hawksmoor'sscheme.)

thereness

These two pictures try to isolate thequality of Thereness which is lyricalin the sense that it is perpetually outof our reach, it is always There. Thesea wall at Aldeburgh carries theshadows of houses, the shadows ofwarmth and laughter. Beyond is thegreat emptiness. In the wild country­side of Scotland the distance is madepersonal to us by the extensionoutwards of the roadside wall as athin white line which, because of itsmeaning (possible line of travel), pro­jects us out into the wilderness.

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In this example of housing inCornwall there is a linear vibrationbetween the two identities, that ofthe tree-lined road and the houseswhich are beyond and partly hiddenby the sloping verge. Comparing thiswith a typical housing developmentalong the roadside in which thehouses are opened up to the road,its advantage is apparent. For notonly arc the houses divided from theroad but also they appear to be. Theroad is one landscape clement whilstthe houses are a quite differentelement which happens, at this point,to be fairly close to the other.

looking into enclosure

Anything that may be occupied eitherby oneself or by one's imagination,which here lifts us into a carved stoneaedicule (in Valencia), becomes tothat extent of interest a warmcolour in the greys "f the inhospitable.Porticos, balconies and terraces havethis ability to communicate. Theydraw us outwards.

pinpointing

The illumination halfway up thestructure draws our attention outwardand upward. What is this mystery ofthe commonplace? At least it takesour eyes off our toe-caps. Even themost ordinary means can be harnessedto the task of arousing in us the senseof otherness through the use of light,through pointing the finger. It is notthe thing pointed out but the evoca­tive act of pointing that arouses theemotions.

truncation

Foreground cuts out background andthe normal, prosaic recession is dis­turbed. Instead of seeing the buildingin its elevational completeness, stand­ing back but upon the same plane asone stands on oneself, the insistenceof the foreground is intensified andfrom there to the building is a leap, asudden visual break since the inter­vening floor (marked with objectswhich aid the effect of gradual re­cession) is cut out and the two things,foreground and distance, are broughtinto dramatic juxtaposition. So, in­stead of the scene making a gradualtransition along the scale of distancebetween oneself and the distantobject, this effect neatly juxtaposesthe near and the distant. The twoexamples of truncation shown here,Versailles and a street in Holland,

37

suffice to demonstrate the charms ofthis immediacy. A somewhat similareffect is produced in those caseswhere a structure is separated fromthe viewer by a featureless plane,a great empty stretch which has nogrip on the eye, such as the view ofthe Horse Guards from St James'sPark or the view of the SupremeCourt in Chandigarh across thewide lake.

change of levelAny account of one's emotional re­actions to position must include thesubject of levels. Below level pro­duces intimacy, inferiority, enclosureand claustrophobia, above level givesexhilaration, command, superiority,exposure and vertigo; the act ofdescending, implies going down intothe known and the act of ascendingimplies going up into the unknown.There is the strange correspondenceof similar levels across a deep gap,near but remote, or the functional useof levels to join or separate the activi­ties of various road users. Thisillustration shows the graveyardbelow Liverpool Cathedral, a quiet,meandering footpath beneath theimmense weight of cliff and tower.

nettingLike truncation, this serves to linkthe near with the remote. Just as thecarefully handled net held in the handcaptures the remote butterfly, so thedevice of framing brings the distantscene forward into the ambience ofour own environment by particulari­zing, by making us see in detailthrough having such detail broughtto our attention through the act ofnetting. The applications of this willbe obvious in bringing the distantland or townscape to life, in selectingand rejecting to a purpose. Onethinks of the view of the Duke ofYork's column with the towers ofWestminster behind, the whole scenebelow eye level, netted by the archesof Regent Street. Behind this andsimilar cases lies the central fact thatthe environment is one whole andthat all these devices are part of theart of linking and joining that wholeinto a significant pattern rather thanallowing it to remain a disjointed andpetty chaos.

These examples show the seafrontat Hove turned into a mural, and anItalian allegorical scene in which thecaptured ships underline the point.

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screened vista

This operates in the normal wayexcept that the sense of Hereness isincreased by the screen of foliage andthe outside world made correspond­ingly remote.

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division of spaee

In considering vistas or any linearextension it is interesting to note thatthe optical division of such a lineinto here and there should be doneby bisecting the angle of vision intotwo roughly equal parts and not bydividing the line into two equallengths. This is demonstrated in thediagram.

grandiose vistaOf the gambits used to exploit Hereand There the vista is, of course, oneof the most popular. The Grandiosevista does just what the whitewashedwall did in Scotland, p. 34, but in itsown expensive way. It links you, inthe foreground at Versailles, to theremote landscape, thus producing asense of power or omnipresence.

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silhouette

Silhouette may be valued for suchclassic examples of delicacy and re­finement as this scene in Oxford, butthe underlying function of such aperfect example remains to be re­vealed. By now we are all pretty wellconversant with the slab blockbuilding with its uncompromisingroof line, and it is recognized thatthis line divides too harshly the en­vironment into the earth-boundstructures and the airy volumes ofthe sky, whereas the tracery, thefiligree, the openwork ridge cappingall serve to net the sky, so that as thebuilding soars up into the blue vaultit also captures it and brings it downto the building. This capacity to netthe sky is particularly rewarding inthe fog and mists of England. Of theexamples shown here it may be saidthat the roof structures of Corbusier,bottom left, and at Golden Lane,centre left, are to some extent amodern version of the classical fili­gree and delicacy and seek to en­trap the space of the sky itself rathermore wholeheartedly than the officesin Upper St Martin's Lane, below.

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.+2

To continue the Screened Vista,this example of St Paul's seen fromCheapside shows the use of foliage towithhold a view until one has pene­trated past the tree when, quitesuddenly, the great wall of thecathedral is revealed at close quarterswith the dome almost vertically above.This dramatic impact at close rangeis only possible by withholding thevIew.

handsome gesture

Considering that so much of urbanlandscape consists of the quiet street,the simple backwater, the humdrumand ordinary, it is perhaps useful toutilize to the full what local talentthere is, as this modest little sceneshows. A fine display of, I hope, giltlettering to illuminate the narrowstreet.

closed vista

Probably the most banal of all theBeaux Arts gambits is the closedvista, which puts a building down andthen invites you to step back andadmire it. This is a somewhat in­organic and purely architecturalattitude, but the closed vista is yetcapable of infinite adaptation. Theparticular instance here shows theauthor's sketch for the developmentof the precinct of Liverpool cathe­dral, in which the vista is closed bythe mass of the tower-but the sceneis really given life by the great archof the transept which is in blackshade and swallows up the pedes­trian's glance in mystery.

deflectionA variation on the closed vista isdeflection, in which the object build­ing is deflected away from the rightangle, thus arousing the expectationthat it is doing this to some purpose,i.e. that there is a place at the end ofthe street as yet unseen and of whichthis building forms a coherent part.This is invariably not so, but de­flection arouses the thought.

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projection and recession

This street in Rye demonstrates thecharm of projection and recession.Instead of the eye taking in the streetin a single glance, as it would in astreet with perfectly straight fa<;ades,it is caught up in the intricacy of themeander and the result is a repose ordwelling of the mind which is whollyappropriate to the subject, which is astreet of houses and not a fluidtraffic route.

incident

The value of incident in a street­tower, belfry, silhouette feature, vividcolour and so on-is to entrap theeye so that it does not slide out intothe beyond with resulting boredom.The skilful disposition of incidentgives point to the basic shapes of thestreet or place; it is a nudge. Thepattern is there but in the pre­occupation of life our attention mustbe drawn to it. I think that it isthrough the lack of incident that somany meticulously thought-out plansfail to come to life in threedimensions.

punctuation

If the vista seems like a completesentence containing subject and pre­dicate, the use of the word punctua­tion may clarify those demarcationsof the enclosed phrase which thispictun illustrates. In the continuingnarrative of the street, function andpattern change from place to place;this should be acknowledged bysome physical signal. The church,for instance, being a particularbuilding, interrupts the alignment ofthe street and so closes one phraseand conceals the next, so that a pauseis created.

narrows

The crowding together of buildingsforms a pressure, an unavoidablenearness of detail, which is in directcontrast to the wide piazza, square orpromenade, and by the use of suchnarrows it is possible to maintainenclosure without forbidding thepassage of vehicles and pedestrians.In this way the articulation of thecity into clear and well-defined partsis made more possible. In its ownright narrowness has a definite effecton the pedestrian, inducing a senseof unaccustomed constriction andpressure.

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fluctuation

In a town, a lived-in place, the lay­out of the spaces in which the publicmoves is a matter having a directimpact on the emotions, as hasalready been noted. To rationalizeall these spaces into streets, andworse, a gridiron of streets, seems todeny the nature of people and extola system which is fundamentallyillogical because it is not derivedfrom the character towns are knownto possess. The typical town is not apattern of streets but a scquC/lce of

spaces created by buildings. Fluctua­tion as shown here at Abingdon isimplicit in this conception, it is thestimulation of our sense of positionthrough moving from the wide to thenarrow and out again into somefresh space.

undulation

Undulation is not just an aimlesswiggly line; it is the compulsive de­parture from an unseen axis or norm,and its motive is delight in suchproofs and essences of life as lightand shade (the opposite of mono­chrome), or nearness and distance(the opposite of parallellism). It islike the rise and fall of foliage in thewind, like the same thought ex­pressed in several different ways.Whatever form it may take itdemonstrates the range of possi­bilities contained in one situation.

closure

In enclosure the eye reacts to thefact of being completely surrounded.The reaction is static: once an en­closure is entered, the scene remainsthe same as you walk across it andout of it, where a new scene is sud­denly revealed. Closure, on the otherhand, is the creation of a break inthe street which, whilst containing the

eye, does not block out the sense ofprogression beyond as in the exampleat Buckingham. You'll probably getthe hang of it by studying the sitingof advertisements in the French

village.

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anticipation

We now turn to those aspects of hereand there in which the here is known

but the beyond is unknown, isinfinite, mysterious, or is hiddeninside a black maw.

First among these cases is anticipa­tion. These two pictures clearly arouseone's curiosity as to what scene willmeet our eyes upon reaching the endof the street.

recession

The art of recession is present inrhe phenomenon, met with from timeto time, of a scene which for some

odd reason fails to fall into perspec­tive. The laws of perspective may beimmutable and it may be that thefurther away an object is the furtheraway it seems to be. And yet unlesswe understand the art of recession itwould not be wise to take this for

granted. Examine, for instance, thisview of Sheffield in which we see two

buildings. Cover up each alternatelywith the hand and the impression isgiven that the dark building is muchfurther away from us than the lightmodern building. This is due to thedifference in scale between the two

buildings and by manipulating scaleone can obviously cause space toextend or diminish. (In the way thatsculptured figures on buildings areoften much smaller than life size in

order to create the impression thatthe building is higher than it reallyis.) In the case of the Lake in StJames's Park, below, the illusion ofrecession of water is created byhiding the actual end of the lakebehind islands and we are left with

a mystery instead uf a plain fact.

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infinity

There IS a difference between sky andinfinity. Sky is the stuff we see overthe roof tops, as in the picture inPimlico, below; infinity is a quite dif­ferent thing. There are, I think, twoways in which the solitude and vast­ness of the sky can be made personalto us. Firstly, by the technique whichserved for truncation; by cutting outthe middle distance and juxtaposingthe immediate here with the sky, itsmore conventional overtones aresomehow discarded and [he deeperqualities aroused, as these two pic­tures, left, serve to remind us.

Secondly, we can consider the ex­pected line of trawl, the person'sassessment of where he can walk. Tosubstitute sky for road produces ashock which changes sky into in­fini[y (see page 186).

mystery

From the matter-of-fact pavement ofthe busy world we glimpse the un­known, the mystery of a city whereanything could happen or exist, thenoble or the sordid, genius or lunacy.This ;s not Withenshawe.

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the maw

Black, motionless and silent, like agreat animal with infinite patience,the maw observes nonchalant peoplepassing to and fro in the sunlight.This is the unknown which utterblackness creates.

linking and joining: the floor

The last section of this part of thecasebook is concerned with linkingand joining, which have already beentouched on in Netting. Today theenvironment is fragmented intoseparate pieces: separate houses,separate trees, separate zones like aseries of totally unrelated notes playedwith one finger on a piano. Thepurpose of this book is to try to bringall the parts of the environmenttogether into dramatic relationship sothat the same notes are used but arearranged to form coherent chords andsequences. And whereas the whole ofthis book is in effect a series ofexamples of linking and joining, justhere we are only considering thesimplest forms, the floor, pedestrianways and hazards.

Buildings, rich in texture and colour,stand on the floor. If the floor is asmooth and flat expanse of greyishtarmac then the buildings will re­main separate because the floor failsto intrigue the eye in the same waythat the buildings do. One of themost powerful agents for unifyingand joining the town is the floor, asthese two pictures so effectivelydemonstrate.

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pedestrian ways

The pedestrian network links thetown together in a viable pattern: itlinks place to place by steps, bridgeand distinctive floor pattern, or byany means possible so long as con­tinuity and access are maintained.The traffic routes sweep along im­personally but the tenacious andlight-hearted pedestrian networkcreates the human town. Sometimesbrash and extrovert, it may syn­chronize with the great traffic routesor with shops and offices, at othertimes it may be withdrawn and leafy;but it must be a connected whole.

continuity

The example opposite, from SheptonMallet, shows in a very simple wayhow the open countryside and thetown centre are directly linked to­gether by a footpath. It should beread from left to right.

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ARCADIA

CONTENT

From top to bottom:

TOW:-;

METROPOLIS

the categoriesIn this third section of the casebookwe are concerned with the intrinsicquality of the various subdivisions ofthe environment, and start with thegreat landscape categories of metro­polis, town, arcadia, park, industrial,arable and wild nature. These are thetraditional categories and there is nocertainty that they will continue toexist in the way we know them. Onthe other hand whatever the futuremay hold, one thing appears to becertain and that is the principle ofcategorization; for without distinctionbetween one thing and another all weget is a form of porridge which willmaintain life only if one can refrainfrom vomiting it up. At the presentmoment of change caused by indivi­dual transport and mass communica­tions, the old pattern is breakingdown. City centres are dying becausethey are too densely built for caraccess, the necessity for people to bein one place in order to do businessand trade is lessening due to thevarious means of communication.Levelling of incomes is breaking upthe large country estates, which arcbeing exploited for housing the in­creased and ever more comfortablyplaced common man.

This explosion resembles nothingso much as a disturbed ant-hill withbrightly enamelled ants movingrapidly in all directions, toot-toot,pip-pip, hooray.

hazards

The process of linking and joiningtogether raises the problem thatalthough it may be visually rewardin,to link here and there, it may notsuit the immediate purposes of thosewho are charged with the COntrolofthe place to allow people or cattle tomove about at will. Hence the use ofhazards. Our diagram shows fourkinds of hazards, the railing, water,planting and change of level. Allthese permit visual access whilstdenying physical access. Perhaps themost well-known hazard is the ha-haor concealed ditch which, from theviewing point of the squire's windo\\does not interrupt the green sweepof the landscape but excludes cattlefrom the home gardens. Below is anexample from the Festival of Britain,showing how water is used to per­suade people to pay for what they eat

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bottom: wild nature or hinterland. Ifthere is plenty of this, the old in­grained laissez-faire form of expansionand exploitation causes little concernsince the overall balance is still held.But once the hinterland is itself con­sumed then suddenly a new situationis created. All is thrown back on it­self and the expansion of one categorycan only be achieved at the expenseof another. In other words, freeaction comes to an end, and we areforced to regard the environment as arelated complex of activities; just asthe universal franchise forced politi­cians to regard society as a balance ofrelationships and not a system inwhich the privileged exploited theunwashed multitude. We, in Englandat least, are thus forced into develop­ing the art of relationship in order tosurvive as a civilized country. Someof its benefits:-and pitfalls-areshown in the next three pages.

Top to bottom:

PARK

INDUSTRY

ARABLE

WILD

the categorical landscape

A simple example of what I mean isthis footpath, left, which follows thedirection of the main road but isseparated from it by a thick hedge.On the one side you have the roarand danger of lorries, on the otheryou have a secure and quite charmingfootpath commanding a pleasantview over the meadows. Thus, bothmotorist and pedestrian are better off.It is akin to the pedestrian networkin the town. The vital clue in thesituation is the hedge-the barrier­which serves to disengage the twofunctions. Now change the scale andmove from the footpath to the greatexpanses of the landscape, as revealedin this air view of the Thamesvalley. If we compare the seven teenthand twentieth centuries, the mostdramatic change is to be seen in themobility of the individuaL Instead oftravel being itselflaborious it is now amere tediousness of getting on andoff. The covering of distance is secon­dary to obtaining and vacating a seat.The old order achieved its typicalpattern of compact cities and opencountry because of the tediousness oftravel, which forced people to gravitateto centres. Today just the oppositeobtains and people cannot leave eachother fast enough. We appear to beforsaking nodal points for a thinlyspread coast-to-coast continuity ofpeople, food, power and entertain­ment; a universal wasteland. If every­one is leaping in different directions,then we simply turn the wholecountry into a chromium-platedchaos. But let us, for the sake ofargument, postulate that a town shallhave an edge and that at that edgethe countryside shall begin. Is thereany reason why this should not beso? Man is liberated in space and isable to overcome the problem ofdistance. That being so, a town canhave an edge, for if the planner putsdown an obstacle it simply meansthat at that point everyone suddenlystarts leaping in the same direction;which turns chaos into an event.This is rather like creating hugehazards in order to bring clarity intothe landscape. It is not zoning.

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immediacy

Preparation, softening up, railings, 'dobe careful', and so on. Sometimes weget sick of all these conventions whichget in between, which get in the way,and we long for the direct contact ofimmediacy, whether it be the edge ofwater or the edge of height. Thisquality of immediacy is implicit inwhat has been written before, theconception of categories and theirjuxtaposition to give drama andclarity to the landscape, and it is alsogermane to what now follows, theconsideration of thisness or

uniqueness.

juxtaposition

This is a very rare example of thedirect relationship between twocategories, village and countryside.The unequivocal character of both isbrought sharply together, there is nofluffing. On the one side the windsoughs through the trees and on theother the hollow tread of boots re­

sounds on a stone pavement. Hollowis an appropriate word. The townturns in upon itself; it is enclosed andhollow in contrast to the exposure ofnature. Below left is a scene inColeshill which contains the sameviolence of contrast, this timebetween the pastoral and industrial.This scene is a typical categoricallandscape but the smaller picture isnot, it demonstrates the hopelessmixture of elements which turns allinto a dull chaos.

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thisness

Here and throughout the nextfourteen pages we try to establish theidea of typicality, of a thing beingitself. This wall of flint, for instance,has a typical texture and by white­washing it the pattern is given its mostintense meaning as the sun illuminatesit. We have only to compare thiswith the tarred section below to seethe difference. On top the delightand assertion, below negation andindifference. The window of thestring shop also displays this con­centration and single-mindednesswhich seems to sum up the qualityof string-ness. That character maybe rich and very variously expressed-secrecy, entanglement, exposure,illusion, even absence-is the lessonto be learnt from this section.

seeing in detail

By attention to detail, by training theeye to see in detail, the man-madeworld starts to grow in interest andquality. Small elements like thisseem to have a life of their own.Walls, which to the quick glance haveno significance, come to life uponmore study. The example below,for instance, has been carefully anddeliberately painted to bring out thequality of wall-ness. The errantmeander of dots is simply an affirma­tion that the wall is alive, that it is asurface. In this sense the whole sceneshould gradually come to life.

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intricacy

This quality is perhaps the leastunderstood (or the least demon­strated) in present day building,which seems to stop dead at theobvious, the slab block, the gridironof curtain walling, the banality ofpastel-shaded surfaces giggling downfrom the sky. But the quality of in·tricacy absorbs the eye. It is an extradimension obtained through theknowledge and experience of trueprofessionalism as opposed to thecrudities of the amateur.

propriety

Propriety stems from the mutualrespect which a true society shouldmaintain amongst its members, whichis not quite the same thing asmanners. Our example is a somewhatastonishing shop fascia with letteringwhich might be thought out of placein a modest street, but since it is anexample of the metalworker's craft it

retains the sense of propriety. Pro­priety never seeks to stifle, rather is itself-expression within a civilizedframework .

urbanity

Manchester Square sums up thewhole character and quality of urbanlife, proportion, elegance, highdensity and the foil of a lush collec­tive garden.

secret town

These next few pages are devoted tothe various kinds of quality to be

seen in town and village. I t is a verysmall selection and is only intendedto stimulate the reader to discover

and explore for himself.Here in Birmingham two worlds

exist side by side: the busy shoppingand traffic route full of bustle, whichis carried by the bridge over thecanal, whose basin is silent anddeserted, a secret town.

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bluntness and vigourIn these two pictures we can sense aforce which survives or bursts throughthe stylistic incompetence of thebuilder. Such buildings stand likerocks.

entanglement

Passing through the streets withtheir straight roof lines, flat walls andsimple fenestration, suddenly the eyeis caught up and entangled in a bunchof intricacy and wonder which is likea visual conundrum. The lamp-postat St Neots and the stagshorn seat inSomerset are long remembered, likeburrs found on a jacket the weekafter a country walk.

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nostalgiaThe wind blows and the luxuriantcreeper on the wall tosses and surges,but behind the glass in the dimly litand silent room the solitary plantgrows alone.

the white peacockA haunted scene on Thames-side.Dull green foliage and the deadwhite of the wooden edging. Deserted.The opening leads only to an aware­ness of voices long since dead.

exposure

Emptiness, a great expanse of sky,geometry, these are some of theelements that create the feeling ofexposure. The storms which havenecessitated and shaped this con­struction recede so that we can walkwith impunity, but this place reallybelongs to the sea.

intimacyLuxuriant growth, enclosure, littlesky and warm brickwork create theinward life of intimacy and cordialityThere is here a bright and bloominghuman vigour.

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illusion

Up to now we have emphasized thecategories and moods of the environ­ment, the quality of thisness. Thenext phase is to bring together Thisand That to find out what emotionsand dramatic situations can beliberated out of the various forms ofrelationship. The first example,illusion, is based on the bluff thatThis is That. We know that it is inthe nature of water to be level inrepose and yet, by cunningly rampingthe retaining walls of the pool, re­taining walls which, as everyoneknows are always level, the illusion iscreated that the water is sloping.Levelness is sloping, This is That.

metaphor

Not quite so brazenly cheeky asillusion is the Metaphor which onlyhints that This is That, but there isgreat scope here for the power ofsuggestion. In the three examplesshown on this opening the standardof suggestion and its aptness is notvery penetrating, I'm afraid, but atleast they convey the idea that theartillery shells surrounding a warmemorial might have been bollards,that a huge circular structure when

thought of as the Colosseum might fitmore easily into the mental climate ofthe 1900s, which put even gas holdersinto period costume, and that theEnglishman's home, below, really ishis castle. Crude as these examplesare (and we could produce otherseven more banal) they yet contain agrain of guidance for the designer.

In preparation for the Festival ofBritain I was asked to consider thetreatment of Whitehall Court, abuilding which lay directly acrossthe Thames from the main con­c0urse of the exhibition. This build­ing terminated in a great cluster oftowers, fleches, gables and it was, infact, a romantic, heraldic structure.The problem lay in making this in­terpretation obvious and clear to all,and this I attempted to do by erect­ing many flags and banners amongstthe intricacy of the roof, pickingthem out with floodlights and leavingthe bottom of the building in dark­ness so that the whole heraldicsilhouette floated above the river atnight.

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the tell-tale

Certain objects possess the qualityof being evocative and absolutelyunmistakable. This boat, for instance,explains the region of which theparticular view is only a part. Theextension of this well-known fact inorder to clarify or underline thecharacter of different places couldwell be exploited further.

animism

Again the assertion, This is That, canbe seen in examples of animism, thesuggestion that a door is a face and,more directly, that a window is amouth, can sometimes induce a senseof strangeness but can be very annoy­ing when it occurs unwanted.

noticeable absence

In this category we include thoseeffects in which the significant objectis omitted, either in order to heightenits significance or because it is notreally necessary and another thingcan take over its function. In thisexample the wall of the church towertakes over the function of the crosswhich is, however, implicit in thesituation. (Note that although it isimplicit its absence has to some extentliberated the sculptor in his con­ception of the drama of Calvary.)

significant objectsCommon objects often achieve dis­tinction by reason of their self­contained force as sculpture or vividcolour and stand out in the generalscene. The term is used more todescribe those objects such as streetfurniture and structural features,which are not normally expected toattract the eye in this way, ratherthan designed works such as sculpture,posters, etc.

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building as sculpture

From time to time buildings (whichnormally observe the conventionsand fit into the landscape as archi­tecture) emerge as another art, and tothe extent that they do this theyachieve a fresh significance due to thedifferent standards to be applied.This lighthouse standing alone in theexpanse of the shore has a BenNicholson base supporting inter­penetrating volumes.

geometry

Geometry is akin to the foregoing. Itis as though some influence descendsout of the Newtonian order and

vastness of the sky and imbues thelandscape with its scale, detachmentand austerity, rather as the appearanceof the headmaster in a school class­

room can change a chattering, rest­less and giggling group of jollychildren into a serious and concen­

trating silence. The English land­scape with its little trees and cosyhamlets is sometimes transmuted to a

quite different character by thegeometry which these pictures tryto suggest.

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multiple use

Or, to continue the interplay, Thisand That can co-exist. Ever sincepeople got really serious about plan­ning one of the main endeavours hasbeen to put people into sunny,healthy homes away from dirty,smelly and noisy industry. Whilst noone will seriously quarrel with this,the principle of segregation and zoninggoes marching on, with the resultthat we are in danger of losing thegreat unities of social living. TheWest End gets more and more officesto the exelusion of theatres and

houses, vast armies of people com­mute, people object to having achurch or a pub built in their streetbecause of the noise. Some magis­trates even say you are breaking thelaw if you stand still on a pavement.But true living accepts the joys oftogetherness along with the setbacks.On balance it is worth it. The sceneat Bankside on the Thames as itmight be developed with residentialde',clopment amongst the warehousesis a typical multiple use view, whilstbelow, the whole attitude is summedup in the French illustrations, inwhich the ground is regarded asbelonging to all: to the players ofboules and also to the train when itwants it.

foils

The last section of this casebook isdevoted to the consideration that inthe complex world already outlined,with its varying categories, its differ­ing kinds of character, its buildingsof diverse styles and materials, therelation of these separate entitiescould result in .the creation of urbandrama. For just as the interaction ofHere and There produced a form ofemotional tension, so the relationshipof This and That will produce itsown form of drama which will existinside the overall spatial framework.This marriage of opposites, illustratedin the next nine pages, may be amatter of scale, distortion, treeplanting or publicity, but it suc­ceeds because This is good for That.

In Bath within the framework ofthe enclosure Victorian, Classical andGothic buildings are grouped to­gether and produce a scene as naturaland comfortable as a clubroom.Below in Oxford the monumentalClarendon building shares the streetwith purely modest domestic build­ings. We are perhaps too well usedto this kind of effect in England butif you cover first one half of thescene with your hand and then theother half, something of the surpriseof the situation will emerge.

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relationship

This example in the City of Londonshows the kind of flowing rhythmthat can be created between buildings,the accidental repetition of angles inpediment, flying shore and stairwaywhich fixes a typical pattern for afleeting second. Below right, is shownthe exact opposite of all this, the totalsegregation of one building from itssurroundings. It isn't so much theseparation of the building by distancewhich offends, it is the barrier ofencircling road which really tells, forif some of the houses fronted on tothe main grassy expanse the con­nection would have been made and afeeling of community created. Bycontrast the integration of an ancientmonument into the structure oftoday is happily shown in theexample from Canterbury, belowleft.

scale

The quality of scale in buildings,constructions and trees is one of themost potent tools in the art of juxta­pOSition, and reference has alreadybeen made to it in the case of re­cession. Scale is not size, it is the in­herent claim to size that the con­struction makes to the eye. By andlarge the two go hand in hand, a bigbuilding does have a big scale and asmall building a smalI scale. It is inthe manipulation of the borderlinethat the designer's skill is calIed for.(In the case of the office building,below right, we see how a bigbuilding is made to seem vaster bythe extravagance of scale.) The firstilIustration, left, shows the juxta­pOsition of two quite different scales,the robust scale of the ashlar walI andthe equalIy assertive but modestscale of the hut. This just aboutsums it up. Both walI and hut havetheir Own scales intensified by beingseen together, the big is bigger andthe small smaller. A similar situationarises in the drawing below of theproposals for Liverpool Cathedralprecinct where the domestic and themonumental are juxtaposed.

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distortion

By deliberately distorting the scaleby giantism a shock is produced asof some sudden violence of nature orof unreality, whereas distortion byreduction produces the effect of ajewel-box.

scale on planOf special interest to the planner isthe sense of scale in the question oftown layout. The case quoted here byEbbe Sadolin (A Wallderer ill

LOlldoll. Methuen) is, to my mind,of extreme importance to all in chargeof new layouts. His own words anddrawing: 'The little park is just bythe Thames between Chelsea Em­bankment and Cheyne Walk. It is adelightful place with lovely old trees,shrubs, rock garden, seats, statues offamous men and an unobstructedview of an old pub called "TheKing's Head and Eight Bells". Inshort, it is well worth a visit. Youcan enjoy the green leaves and restfor a while in the pleasant companyof the people of Chelsea. But whenyou try to find it on the map youbegin to wonder. For where exactlyis this park in your otherwise reliableatlas of London, which is a large­scale affair in a bulky tome of131 pages? It must be there for hereis the bridge, here is the embank­ment, and here-yes, there it is, thatlittle object the size of a very smallpine-needle, down in the left-handcorner under the word "Walk".That is the entire park.'

Prairie planners please note.

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In this Swedish example trees havebeen used as a sort of living wall­paper to decorate the vast geometryof the grain silos.

The last example, and the mosthomely, shows the exterior decoratorat work. The tree has been placed inthe village centre in just the sameway that a bowl of flowers is placedon the living-room table, and for thesame reason, because it is green andfresh and a foil to the permanentstructure.

trees incorporatedOf all the natural aids to townscapethe tree is surely the most ubiquitous,and the relationship between trees andtowns has a long and honourablehistory, The conception that treeswere structures in just the same wayas buildings led to pleaching and anarchitectural layout of planting, buttoday the tree is more usually acceptedin its own right as a living organismwhich is pleased to dwell amongst us,In this way new relationships arepossible between our own organicarchitecture and the natural structure.The first example shows the volumecreated by the clump of trees: we allknow the meaning of this, the senseof enclosure and space, a space thatcan be entered and left. Here thehouse is situated inside this spacewith the result that a structuralvolume is created akin to the classicalportico, left.

The parallel of foliage and traceryin this Spanish scene, below, producesa momentary and transient synchroni­zation which asserts a community ofinterest beyond the normal and is tothat extent remarkable. There is awhole field of study of the texturesand habits of growth of trees whichcan be exploited. For just as treeshave different characteristics, fasti­giate or drooping, geometric or fluffy,polished or velvet, so these qualitiesmay be used in dramatic conjunctionwith buildings, either to extend theconception or to offset it as a foil.

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publicity

Publicity raises the temperature inthe world of planning because thereare two things concerned, first thequestion of propriety and second thevitality of the medium in the urbanscene. To those who hold architectureto be sacred our first illustration isanathema. In fact, since advertisingis accepted as a part of our societythen the actual morals of the casedon't enter the argument; it is aUtaken for granted and we are left witha house of lettering which has its owncharm and vitality as a foil to thestreet. Below, in the view of the citycentre, we hint at the kind of night­time development (Piccadilly Circus,Times Square) which has a surrealistdrama of shapes, lights and move­ment in which the message sinksback under the free show, theevening-out sensation. Architecture?We could do without it and have aneat framework for the variations ofpublicity.

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calligraphy

One of the most rewarding pastimesis to take a really incisive writing in­strument and draw on white paper orwalls. In these two balconies atCheltenham the slender and cursiveironwork is drawn on to the simplewhite walls creating a most preciseand delicate foil, whilst the moresturdy serpent of the seat slides intosupporting posi tion like a satire onthe rough utilitarianism of theboards.

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The fourth and last section of thecasebook concerns itself not with thevarious moves in the game but withthe intrinsic quality of things made­structures, bridges, paving, letteringand trim-which create the environ­ment.

How to describe what is meant?Imagine yourself in a London pubwhich closes for the night at t I p.m.The landlord calls 'last orders' andlater calls 'time'. At this moment hemight be seen to take the dishclothwith which he has been drying thepots and hang it up over the beerpulls. This simple action is in theFunctional Tradition, it is unequi­vocal, pithy and wonderfully econo­mical. To put a notice on the countersaying 'sorry, too late' is part of thebumbling, fluffy and muddle-headedtradition. The Functional Traditionhas something of peasant cunning to it.

THE FUNCTIONAL TRADITION

structures

What is intrinsic to the problem isallowed to speak for itself instead ofbeing overlaid with an alien formal­ism. The Thames bridge contains awholly convincing relationship ofangles and the significant metal platesare picked out in black. Workshopslike the one to the left have beenbuilt since the eighteenth centuryand this proves the validity of thetradition. A comparison with theawkward and heavy bridge aboveserves to underline the pithy andtaut quality of the tradition.

A reminder to civic gardeners iscontained in the picture of a seat atBidston Hill, which carries with it nohint that the land is occupied ormunicipally digested. Here is a seatwhich might have been left by atraveller.

taming with tact-or the intrusion of man into thewilderness without vulgarity. Ofspecial interest today when the wildplaces of our countryside are beinginvaded by the constructions of manare these pictures which may help tounderline the delicacy of the situa­tion. Our picture of the cliffs atCorsica is remarkable for the reasonthat the houses enter into the spirit,into the wildness of the scene bycrowding up to the edge of the cliff,up to the danger point. Had theybeen set back a hundred feet or soall would have been lost and ruinedsince the effect would then have beenone of a prissy suburbanism (whichis precisely what is wrong with someof the nuclear power stations thatare being built in the wildest partsof this country).

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as a physical barrier; the very simpiest perhaps the oldest and yet still themeans will suffice to give this warn_ most effective form of fence with its

'III ing. The iron rail on this footbridge pointed tops and trim effect of black",I only occurs where the continuity of and .white..Below left is a composite

I the bank reaches outwards and is a barner which consists of heavy stone1 minimum structure. The metal rails. bollards, enough to serve as a warn-

! 'I below left are delicate lines drawn ing to traffic, connected by lightI at danger points and not ponderous chains which warn the unthinkingII and stuffy barriers, like those shown pedestrian. These are direct and:1 below, which are right outside the practical steps taken to avoid disaster,

II tradition. unlike the pompous and 'designed'bridge rail below.

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black and whiteThe embellishment of structuresusually takes the form of paintingwith black and white, a process whichoften performs a function in itself aswell as creating a trim effect. This isespecially so in positions wheresecurity is of paramount importancesuch as in harbours and on the road.This detail of the harbour at LymeRegis shows the use of white wallswhich are like a signal.

The sheer vivacity and gaiety ofblack and white is well demonstratedin the little beach hut at the bottom.The two rough squares of whitewashon the field wall are a signal, and theimposition of geometry, howevercrudely, makes the point that this ishere by design and not by accident.

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steps

To men who have been out fishing inhalf a gale these steps probably seernlike a haven of safety. At any rate, intheir context, they give a penetratinginsight into the quality we are tryingto isolate. The two illustrations atthe foot of the page are of the sameconstruction in which the direct, left,and the superfluous, right, are shownside by side (see also taming withtact).

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texture

Far too often in recent years the pro­gressive architect's attention has beendirected to the big idea, the townplan, the national plan, the cosmicplan, to the exclusion of more localand particular interests. The resulthas been that he has begun to losehis ability to see other than with themind's eye. In many ways he is like achild who, after an earlier period ofuninhibited pleasure in simple visualexperience, finds his interest in seeingatrophied by his preoccupation withlearning (that is, his growing in­tellectual development), with disas­trous effect on his creative faculties.The burden of technical awarenesshangs heavily on the practising archi­tect, and the sense of social responsi­bility often assumes the proportionand character of an incubus as well asa stimulant. A wholly satisfying andvirile architecture cannot flourishunless in its practice social justifica­tion is lavishly compounded withpersonal pleasure, a wholesome de­light in the creative process itself aswell as an appreciation of the end inview. There is no need to regard suchnaive delight as almost sinful, since

without the ingredient of sensuousenjoyment the practice of architecturemust inevitably degenerate into littlemore than a sordid routine, or at themost the exercise of mere intellectualcleverness. In this light, the examplesof texture here can be gladlyaccepted as a stimulation to be foundin the ordinary scene.

lettering

Since the day when the town-crier nolonger needed to shout himselfhoarse, but could paste up a noticethat most people were able to read,display types have never ceased tomultiply in quantity and variety.Practically every yard of townscapehas its house-name, placard, road­sign, fascia board, advertising hoard­ing, bus-route sign or road name.The truly functional type-face is theone that, properly spaced, makes itsmessage clear from the distance atwhich it is intended to be read. Itmay be bold, black and purposeful,or alternatively bold and white on ablack ground. It may be trim, slimand well-formed when its message issecondary to the bolder one. Many ofthe early nineteenth-century play~bills bristle with such type-faces andhave never been improved upon.They provide much better models forimitation than most of the moderndisplay types produced today, and

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...trim

The smallest details of the street orcivic space should fit into the town­scape in performing their individualfunctions. The circular seat and thecorrugated edging are representativeof the vast complexity of detail metwith in civic gardens and squaresthat are frequently called ornamental.These two are selected for the satis­factory way in which they avoid sucha description, yet achieve in theirfunctional way, embellishment of afar higher quality. Of the many smallstructures to be found this publiclavatory may sum up the functionalvigour of expression. The twoexamples below show what happenswhen this clarity of purposebecomes obscured.

CAUTION.MEN

WORKINC

OVERHEAD

there is an immense variety stillavailable, and still used by auc­tioneers, canal authorities and jobbingprinters. In comparison to the selec­tion of sturdy and virile type-facesshown we contrast the opposite.Sans serif of the type shown below_all too commonly used-is functional_ism without feeling, it is completelycharacterless and totally lacks therobustness of the example on theprevious page. The shop lettering,bottom, debilitated and deformed,overlooks the prime need forlegibility.

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the private square: enclosed

GENERAL STUDIES: Squares for All Tastes

Town squares, once the preserve of privilege, havesince the wartime salvage of railings become publicspaces. (This is taken from a study written in 1947.)It is unlikely and undesirable that they should allreturn to their old use, but so far no definite pro­posals have been put forward for bringing them intoline with the needs of a changed society. These pagesdemonstrate, with examples chosen from London,how Britain's squares could be made to serve life asit is lived in our towns today. The particular squaresnamed are token ones merely used for the purposesof illustration. The aim is to put forward principleswhich may be applied anywhere. Right at the startlet it be pointed out that where function and archi­

tectural unity still march together no change isadvocated.

Thus where the square is still residential it could

traffic-signs and lamp-posts are therepetitive vertical elements of thestreet scene. Their large numberputs a premium on simplicity andclarity, which is clearly the reasonwhy street symbols have borrowedfreely from the nautical tradition ofblack and white. It should not bedifficult to sort out the wheat fromthe chaff (above and below, forexample) on this page.

the road

Road signs must be clear and maketheir message at a glance. Whiteletters painted on the road do notobstruct, and they site their messagesin the spot most easy to see. In thissatisfactory way the road takes overthe nautical black and white. Bollards,

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the private square: open

well remain a private or communal garden, enclosedand screened from passers-by by the usual railings.

A variation on the private enclosed square is theprivate open square, which is guarded only byhazards such as those of judicious planting andchanges of level. In quiet neighbourhoods suchsquares do not need further protection, and thisimmunity encourages a freer excursion into urbanlandscaping in the technical meaning of informalnon-academic layout.

With justification we may assume the precinctualorganization of cities and a more equal distributionof privileges. Put together in terms of town planning,the result will be the square as quadrangle protectedfrom all but local traffic.

While the metropolitan square is an amenity whichshould not remain barred to all but the few who

happen to overlook it, that does not imply theobliteration of all distinctions. As Mayfair happens

98

to be expensive and exclusive, then this should deter­mine the character of Grosvenor Square in itsrenascent public form. The presence of the AmericanEmbassy, together with the square's wartime associa­tions as moral G.H.Q. of American troops in Eng­land, has prompted the authorities to make of it amemorial to President Roosevelt, a scheme whichhas had wide public support. Why not make Gros­venor Square a real American Corner? Not theAmerica associated in the eyes of Europeans withvulgarization; the connection is with Fifth Avenuerather than Broadway. The best American food,exclusive underground cinema, swans and fountains(but not a soda fountain). On great occasions theAmerican Embassy could hold garden parties in thesquare. A corner of London that is America for bothLondoners and Americans.

the public square

A view of Leicester Square in the eighteenthcentury would be virtually impossible to reconcilewith its present condition, a boisterous jungle oftraffic, changing signs, vivid lettering and garishposters. The desperate pre-war attempt to preservea be-railed garden, although a pleasing evidence ofofficial grit and determination, was always a flop. Itsimply induced a depressing feeling of prohibition,the feeling that one was being inhibited for thewrong reason. Far better to obtain the feeling ofspace and openness by sweeping away the railingsand laying down a paved floor throughout. There

the popular square

are sufficient cafes round the square to rent spacefor tables, as is done in France, and gaily colouredvelariums suspended between the trees would giveprotection from birds and rain. What is most im­portant, however, is for the landscapist to under­stand the vital and popular visual appeal of theLeicester Square type of landscape. The fact that itis the aesthetic expression of the dive and pin-tablesaloon, is no reason for the urban planner to turn uphis nose. These activities, for better or for worse,are a part of urban life, and as such make a veryvaluable contribution to the visual scene.

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the square as quadrangle: municipal square In a complete squares policy there should be aplace for everything-even the undiluted monu­mental. The existing buildings and proposals for thefuture of Russell Square suggest that its charactershould be municipal and monumental. The buildingswhich surround it are on the whole massive and

monumental, London University, the Imperial andRussell Hotels and the new office blocks. Wherethere is a marked change in the use and character ofthe boundaries of the square it is reasonable tosuggest a general change of character to utilize thedrama which traffic in volume can produce. That isto say, the monumentality should flow right throughwith all its devices of the axis, fountains, seats andsculpture, and so produce an unsubtle yet impressiveeffect of metropolitanism.

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Cross at Salisbury 2, and over page, is taken as anexample of the sort of process that endangers placesof congregation in our age.

Observation suggests that a fixed object acts as amagnet to movable objects: in I, at Minehead,Somerset, the trees have attracted to themselves aweighing machine and a nameplate device. It isobvious that the motive for this arrangement arisesfrom the desire to be tidy and not clutter up freespace with separate objects over which people couldstumble.

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Cross as Focal Point

The idea of the town as a place of assembly, of socialintercourse, of meeting, was taken for grantedthroughout the whole of human civilization up tothe twentieth century. You might llssemble in theForum at Pompeii or round the market cross, butyou still assembled; it was a ritual proper to man,both a rite and a right. Nor in the general way didyou have to explain whether your motives wereproper or profane. Men are gregarious and expect tomeet. In all ages but ours, that is. Here the Poultry

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as in the Temple Courts, which will emphasize thecollegiate atmosphere and the pedestrian priority; itwill also emphasize the fact that these squares havebecome the property of all. The quadrangle is thebasis or neutral pattern which will vary as local con­ditions change. It may be municipal as in the eX­ample of Russell Square, exclusive as in GrosvenorSquare, popular as in Leicester Square, or quietlycollegiate as in this example of Manchester Square.

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the square as quadrangle: the collegiate square

102

With the reorganization of traffic and the forma­tion of precincts the flow of vehicles will be reducedto those which have business in the area. Even so incertain squares there should be pedestrian priority­that is to say, if there is a pedestrian and a taxi, thetaxi gets out of the way of the pedestrian. Theattempt to preserve a few square feet of cat-ridden,sooty turf in the smaller public squares is surelyhardly worth the trouble. Rather pave the whole area

7

The Poultry Cross is a handsome structure, it isalso of considerable age and given these two qualitiesthen the happy partnership between planet andsatellite, between anchor and people, stands in greatdanger. The process is as follows: more and moretraffic is forced through the streets and open spaceis coveted by the engineers. In search of this theyespy the Poultry Cross, 5, with its surrounding pave­ment, a valuable piece of ground. The only thingthat preserves the open space from immediateseizure is the obstinate cross. However, it is dis­covered to be a work of architecture and should be

protected, it is railed in, 6, and the traffic edgescloser. Divorced now from its function it only awaitsthe final retirement to a country park whilst in thetown the stream of people circulates, the trafficmoves faster and another slice of the pedestriantown is washed away, 7, another anchor is lost toanother open space. Fortunately this has not yethappened in Salisbury, but it may not be long.---._-

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However, the most movable object in town is thehuman being and, for possibly different reasons, hetoo needs anchorage. He needs it in the various out­door activities of trade, recreation and social life.Now, to provide open space so that these activitiescan take place at all, is in itself not really sufficient.Open space as an element in the town is essentialbut it needs also to be furnished with such objects

1°4

as will turn the disassociated stream of people intO

groups as in 3, previous page, at Orvieta, Italy.For people are gregarious and need the incident,the feature or the anchor. In the case of a tree one

might say that it provides shade or shelter and ofthe covered market cross-the same thing. yetthe anchor provides a little more than the purelyutilitarian attraction. By construction it is iIn-

movable and hence, by use, it becomes a recognizedrallying point.

The Poultry Cross in Salisbury illustrates thislast point since, as can be seen in 4, the market stallserected in its shade have their own tarpaulin coversand do not rely on the structure for protectionagainst the elements. Rather do they rely on its im­movability, its security in the surging tide of trafficand shoppers.

1°5

The following sequence in Blandford Forumcovers in a few hundred linear yards no less thansix different effects of closure, all gained through themedium of the main road.

It is only when it is compared with cases where noart is used such as the obvious one of deadconformity to the road, above, that we realize thedifference between closure and mere change ofdirection.

The photograph, above, a typical village scene(East Chiltington), shows the application of closure.The projecting house effectively contains the eyeas the road sweeps past. Yet how often is the artin such a device taken for granted?

Closure

Closure, as indicated on p. 47, may be differentiatedfrom Enclosure, p. 25, by contrasting 'travel' with'arrival'. Closure is the cutting up of the linear townsystem (streets, passages, etc.) into visually digestibleand coherent amounts whilst retaining the sense ofprogression. Enclosure on the other hand provides acomplete private world which is inward looking,static and self-sufficient.

Hence closure is not intended to mean the closingof a vista, such as Buckingham Palace at the end ofthe Mall. For here the sense of progression andcontinuity is lacking whilst closure is rather thearticulation of movement (the closed vista falls intothe camp of enclosure). A building or wall whichcreates closure will generally provide also a feelingof anticipation.

Closure is effected by some irregularity or asym­metry of layout whereby the path from source togoal is not automatically and inevitably revealed tothe eye as in the gridiron plan. This irregularitydivides the route into a series of recognizable visualstatements, each one effectively and sometimes sur­prisingly linked to the other, so that progress on footis rendered interesting by reason of

the subdivisions created, which are human in scalethe provision of incidentthe sense of unrolling or revealingidentification

A simple example of ,identification' can be obtainedby comparing the centres of Gloucester and Chester,both similar in plan, left. In Gloucester the two mainroads cross cleanly at right angles with the resultthat the visitor is confused, he cannot get his bear­ings since the crossing looks the same from everyapproach. At Chester, on the other hand, the crosS­ing is staggered slightly so that buildings block theview and clarify the situation by the provision oflandmarks.

This in itself is justification enough for departingfrom the 'logical' straight line layout but it mightalso be noted that the building making a closure isin a key position and consequently such a positionmight be allocated to buildings which generallyaccentuate the towniness of towns-town hall,

church, hotel, big store, etc., etc.Chester

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I The square solid mass ofthe Crown Hotel faces theapproach road as it crossesthe river Stour. And whatwe see is not a secondaryelevation, as might be ex­pected, but the main eleva­tion. Here is exactly thekind of entrance a markettown ought to have, a pubwhich by blocking the vistaboth invites you in and fillsyou with anticipation as towhat's just around thecorner. The narrow gap ...

z ... opens out as the roaddrives to the centre andthe vista is cut short by thedeflection of the road tothe right. Closure trans­forms a line into an area, aroad into a place, squareor quad.

3 A quad, however, whichis not only human in scaleand not stuff-shirt, but alsonot static. The quad propercreates static enclosure, theeffect of which is to makethe observers want to settledown if only on a seat;closure also creates en­closure but of the rovingkind under which the eye(and the body) is forcedforward from the onebefore to the one after. Asthe next materializes, thelast disintegrates.

4 As one turns round thetown begins to be revealed;not all at once but co­herently. (The letter A is arecognition point for thenext picture below. Herethe next theme is intro­duced in the shape of anew piece of stage scenerycoming in at an angle.)

5 And now there is a clearexample of the quad-likestructure or sequence thatis possible by the use ofclosure. The suddenwidening and obliqueangle of the road producethe sense of area ratherthan line, and the eye ismade conscious of arrivalby the sudden appearanceof the town hall. In fact,however, there is no square.These are street scenespure and simple.

109

6 And as the scene unfoldsthe church tower, the •

climax, is at last revealedDue to the angle of the .road it performs the lastact of closure before ...

7 . . . we enter the widemain street where every­thing is revealed. This isthe finale to the successiveacts of closure whichformed a series of dramaticvisual events in a co­ordinated sequence whichprovides, on a delightfuldomestic scale, a modelpiece of towns cape. Acci­dental or deliberate? Thosewho invariably answeraccidental to that questionmight like to be remindedthat the Bastard brothers.architects, rebuilt the tOwncomplete after a fire in theeighteenth century.

The Line of Life

The essential function of a town should be visible

from a single glance at the plan. This obviously isbecause the arrangement of its parts reflects certainlines of force which represent also the combinationof circumstances that brought the town into being.Conversely, when a town lacks character and struc­ture, the failure can nearly always be traced to someimpediment in the relationship of form to function,whereby the lines of force have become confused,or have disappeared. This explains the amorphouscharacter of so many modern towns, but it alsosuggests the planner's opportunity. Since his task,in any case, is one of resolving conflicts and allocatingthe regard to be paid to rival demands, and since theprocedure he follows is inevitably one of particulari­zation, the success with which he discovers and givesvisual interpretation to the most significant lines offorce will largely determine whether the town achievesan intelligible and characteristic form.

This opportunity is best revealed in a town-suchas the typical seaside town-where the lines of forcehave an obvious and immediate relationship withlines of demarcation in the geographical sense. Thevery raison d' etre of the seaside town is the line alongwhich land and water meet, and that perhaps ex­plains why character survives bener in the seasidetown than elsewhere. On the following pages threetowns on the south coast of England are used as ademonstration of the sort of action a planner, aware

of the significance of this relationship, might take intrying to preserve or create a good urban character.

We start with Brixham, a place where the meetingof land and sea forms a natural amphitheatre en­closing the harbour, and the shape of the town canhardly do otherwise than coincide with the onedominating line of force-in this case the gatheringof a community protectively round the shipping towhich it owes its living. In this lies Brixham'scharacter, a character that is already clearly andvigorously expressed. All the planner has to do is tointensify the result visually, so that every particle ofdrama and logic can be wrung from it.

In the next example, Fowey, the line of force hasstill one dominating character, the crowding activityalong the waterfront, but here, with houses andcliffs descending straight into the water and theabsence of a continuous quay, a barrier is placedbetween the inhabitant and what is, in fact, the realline of force, the coast-line. Steps occasionally rundown to it from the interior, but there is no con­tinuous access along it. All that is needed is to linkthese points together and the real character of Foweyfalls into line.

Looe is a more complex case, where several linesof force operate simultaneously, and the planner'stask is to disentangle them and allow each its propertopographical expression, building up the town'scharacter by this means.

In

Brixham

As good an illustration asyou could wish for of theliveliness of scene andcharacter that ensues whenthe natural lines of force,deriving from a town'sorigin and function, find animmediate echo in itstopography. The harbour(facing page) is the effec­tive centre of the town,which is built up intoterraces round the almostenclosed inner harbour inthe form of a naturalamphitheatre. It is a com­bined social and working

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114

centre; visitors promenadethe quays and treat the fishmarket as a free entertain­ment; coloured sails andflags and the whirlingwings of seagulls combineto create a stimulatingeffect-that of a busy in­dustrial scene permanentlyentece.

In these circumstancesnothing is required of theplanner but a watchfuleye to make sure the pre­sent compact unbrokenline of surrounding build­ings is not interferedwith-his only additionaltask being to provide carrarks out of sight of

the harbour, so that thesparkling water-front sceneis no longer blocked bythe dark shapes of rowS ofparked cars. The plannercan, however, intensify theexisting character of theamphitheatre of buildingsby seeing they are giventhe maximum visual co­herence. An obvious wayof doing this is to white­wash them. At presentthe buildings surroundingBrixham harbour aremostly a mixture of dunsand greys (previous page).The unifying effect ofwhitewash is shown inthe picture above. as it might be

Fowey

As with Brixham, Fowey'stopographical shape re­flects pretty closely theraison d' ecre of the town:a built-up line where landand water meet. But here,instead of a circle ofbuildings round an en­closed harbour it takes theform of a line of buildingsalong the shore of anestuary. Brixham has thespecial virtue, from whichit derives much of itsvitality, that the line whereland and water meet is asocial as well as an archi­tectural line-the linewhere sailors and lands­men freely mingle. Fowey,on the other hand, has thefailing that the satis­factorily built-up line ofarchitecture acts as abarrier, only allowinghuman contact with thewater at one or twoisolated points.

The planner's first taskthen is to arrange somesort of continuous access,so as to revitalize thewater-line-see proposalson the following pages.The principle he shouldfollow is that a mere phy­sical line along the water­front (such as the cliff-toproadway bounded by awall in the picture above)is not enough; there mustinstead be intimate livingcontacts all along theline, below.

115

as it is

The sea-front line is aplage (top and r) shelteredon one side by a pier, on theother by the rocky head­land of the bay. The river­front line is a fish market(bottom and 2a) similar instyle to that at Brixham.The unsatisfactory partof Looe is that stretch ofthe line before it divides,2b-before the HighStreet branches offfrom the river-frontand leads away to theplage. This is where thelinear water-front charactershould be most stronglymarked, where the in­habitants should have mostopportunity of living awater-front life-bothspiritually and physically.But in fact the line herehas disintegrated, leaving adirection less no-man's­land, used by the councilfor parking cars.

The water-front archi­tecture of Fowey plunges,logically and dramatically,straight into the estuary;in many cases sea-wall andhouse-wall are one. Butonly at certain points isthere public access to thewater, with the result thatFowey loses the oppor­tunity of drawing maximumvitality and character fromthe fact of the fullest sociallife being lived along theline where land and watermeet.

The planner's objectmust be to provide excite­ment all along the frontwithout destroying itsarchitectural continuity.One way of achieving thiswould be to build a pedes­trian walk at whateverchanging levels the topo­graphy suggests, linking upthe existing access pointsinto a continuous line. Thepictures show how thiswalk might appear atvarious points where accessis now unobtainable. Sucha walk would be com­pletely in keeping withFowey's present intricatelybuilt-up pedestriancharacter.

Looe

A more complex case thanBrixham or Fowey, be­cause the line is a branch­ing one, eventually be­coming two lines, one alongthe river, one at rightangles facing the open sea(plan opposite). Eachstretch of water-front hasits own individuality,expressing the fact thatthe most intense sociallife is lived along twofronts, each different incharacter but to whichLooe jointly owes itsexistence.as it might be

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A moral tale. Top: theidyllic river scenery justabove Looe; thick woodsclimb down to the water'sedge. Second: the townitself-at the sametime a river and a seasidetown, but in either case ascompactly built up as atown of this charactershould be. The river-frontis lined with houses incontinuous terraces; thesea-front the same. Third:the linear principle aban­doned; nearby headlandsruined by isolated build­ings: their bad example isaffecting Looe itself; onthe hills behind the townthe terrace formation hasbeen allowed to dis­integrate, destroying theemphasis on the line fromwhich Looe, obeying themagnetic attraction of thewater-front, derives itswhole character.

What is called for isa boulevard where shops-this is an extension ofthe main shopping street­forming a continuous baseto the cliff that rises above,could face a wide promen­ade, where the inhabitantscould stroll beneath trees,conscious of partaking inthe life of the river.

The drawing oppositesuggests how this keystretch of Looe could bebrought back into charac­ter by providing a car parkelsewhere and allowing theboulevard its rightful useas a meeting place offisherfolk and landlubbers.Under the trees fish stallsand restaurants overlookthe water near the fishmarket.

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suitable convention-astretch of cobbles acrossthe access road throughwhich a flagged walk pro­vides pedestrian access(since cobbles are difficultto walk on). Cobbles areregarded as an alternativeto grass. Inside this pro­tecting band the designeris free to employ anymaterial in any pattern.Convention: for car-driverscobbles mean NO ENTRY.

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Legs and Wheels

The street scene is bounded by sky, walls and road.The sky, ever changing, the walls, old and crumblingor sharp and new; variety of style and contour,texture, colour and character. The floor-a mono­tone of tarmac.

Headed by the fire engine and ambulance, themotor-car has penetrated every crack and crevice ofour cities, lanes, yards and courts. AIl the richnessand variety of the floor has been submerged in thetraffic flood and inhabitants of buildings venture outat their peril, making their way by means of islands,refuges, safety zones and beacons.

When we consider that in the normal urban blockstreets occupy about one-third of the total area weget some idea of the loss which this mechanized ageis sustaining. Instead of walls and floor being inharmony, the floor linking or separating architecturalelements and expressing the kind of space whichexists between buildings, it is as though the buildingswere models plonked down on a blackboard.

There are many materials which can be used torevitalize the town's floor, to reinforce the highwaycode and, by indicating different uses, in time toestablish conventional behaviour-flagstones forpedestrians only, cobbles, setts, slate tiles, mosaic,gravel, grass. They can be light or dark, rough orsmooth, plain or intricate. The possibilities of designare immense. Yet today they are all sacrificed to thetechnical necessities of the contact between thefloor and a rubber tyre.

Traffic inside a building is mainly pedestrian,collisions are rare and fatalities even rarer. In the

forecourt or drive, in the open air, things are stillsane and reasonable. The odd car realizes its in-

pedestrians onlyThere are occasions whenabsolute pedestrian priorityis desirable. This mayOCcurin the case of cathe­dral precincts, and suchspecial cases as schools,squares and old people'shouses. Nevertheless, en­trance for fire engines andambulances is essential,and this precludes the useof any physical barrier.The illustration shows a

trusion and makes way for the pedestrian. But as thepedestrian's world dwindles to thin ribbons of pave­ment on either side of the traffic stream-let him

beware. The warm, comforting security of indoorspasses too quickly to the exposure of the hunted.

Thus we have two results arising from the uni­versal flooding of our towns by the motor-car:(a) the suppression of variety and character in theground surface; (b) the invasion of the pedestrianreserves.

Point (a), however, is by no means implicit in theexistence of motor traffic, since if the business oforganizing road traffic efficiently were studied, asolution might be found in the use of road surfacesto indicate the road's use for a particular purpose.A coloured pencil is more easily chosen out of itsbox if the outside of the pencil is coloured to matchthe lead instead of the colour being named. In thesame way a universal convention of colours andpatterns indicating such things as one-way streets,parking, pedestrian crossings and so on would allowthe road to be read at a glance. This would, as aresult, introduce a new functional aesthetic into theurban view.

First of all, a system of priorities to stem anddirect the flood of traffic. Secondly, a set of roadconventions to enforce this, such conventions beingintegral with the road itself and of such a nature asto enhance the surrounding buildings.

For example, a street or square limited to pedes­trian use would be protected by a stretch of cobblesacross its access. Convention: no car may driveacross cobbles. The drawings opposite and on thenext page illustrate the point.

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pedestrian priority

No one denies the place ofswiftly moving traffic inthe life of a town. It is theuniversal spread of traffic,its arrogant seizure of allroads, that calls for protest.It is very human to want

122

to drive right up to one'sfront door, but in admit­ting this we also admit thepossibility of admitting anytraffic. In this way a streetwhich may have a dozencars belonging to it is, asoften as not, busy all daywith traffic which uses itas a short cut or an easyway round a major cross­roads. This example (theviewpoint is shown by thearrow on the plan) showsthe street or square inwhich traffic is limited tothat having business in thearea.

There are two points tonotice here: (a) The scarcityof traffic will have the

'\~effect of enhancing thedomestic character of thewhole square. (b) Thosemotorists who do enter it,being on their own ground,will observe the nicety ofgood manners and regardfor others which is sodifficult to observe whenone is on 'foreign' terri­tory, i.e. when we do notfear recognition and do aswe please. Convention: thearea to be paved with flag­stones means pedestrianpriority. Demarcation ofpavement, if any, is left todiscretion of designer. Inthis drawing a two-footband of setts is used withbollards at intervals.

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Hazards

Materials of the visual planner are lumps of rock,cement, wood, earth, metal, tar, grass, in variousstates, tended or otherwise, and hills, water, people,the stuff of which the world is made. His urban

job is so to dispose and relate these lumps of matteras to create out of the demands of the human racefor shelter and communication, leisure and cere­monial, a humane kind of urban scenery: a human­ized townscape. Although many of his problemsmay be large ones dealing with such matters asthe siting of traffic arteries, their realization dependson mere nuances of design, a truth which perhapsamongst visual planners only architects perceivein all its meaning. Selected here in illustration ofthis truth is a problem described as the problemof the HAZARD, a problem dismissed by mostplanners as a mere matter of fencing, hedge orrailing, wire or yew. Thus regarded the problemseems simple, but as realized in our cities the in­sensitive borough engineer's methods of enclosureare the most common and most fruitful sources of

visual crime. One of the war's advantages was thatthe removal of many kinds of not strictly essentialfencing had something of the effect of the removalof restrictions; they opened out prospects of a morefreely flowing world. Today as the restrictions pileup again the authorities are beginning to rememberamongst other things their railings, and this makesthe moment propitious for the consideration of whatmight be called the theory of hazards. Fencing is away of creating hazards, but hazards are of manykinds. Sometimes they are merely moral, as when apiece of mown grass is surrounded by a stone kerbwith the unwritten command 'Keep off'. Where spaceand distance are wanted this is an acceptable form,though the acceptance of the moral hazard assumesa society with a desire to honour conventions. Morepractical expedients are the ha-ha and the waterhazard, but there are cases in which the practical aswell as the scenic requirements demand a visualobstacle or a sense of enclosure, and here railings orwalls may actually be an asset to the scene. The notesthat follow try not to lay down general principles butto explore the visual possibilities of the hazard re­garded as a component of the urban scene and as oneof the many tricks in the box of tricks of the visualplanner.

123

railings

Since salvage-time when nearly every square lost itsoriginal cast-iron railings, many changes haveoccurred. First there were the shelters, surface Orsemi-submerged, then grass gave way to large tractsof mud. With the war's end the forces of privilegeonce more asserted themselves in the form of chickenwire and chestnut palings. In many cases, howeveralthough ownership was unchanged, those forwhoU:the privileges were kept had gone. Offices, embassiesclubs, schools and flat-dwellers had replaced them:

In very few cases have the owners yet caught upwith the new requirements that a changing societyand its consequent shifts in urban population havebrought about. Once the new demands on squaresare realized, certain problems will arise as to theirplanning and upkeep. On the following pages pro­posals are made which closely affect both theseproblems. On the right Belgrave

Square after the removalof the railings and beforethe austerity fencing wasput up. This good thick'woodland' hedge, kept incheck by the railings andgrowing out above headlevel, would have beenquite an adequate safe­guard-so long as it hadreceived the proper atten­tion-to the amenities ofthe square. It made at thetime a real contribution tourban landscape-thickplanting, growing out andnot trimmed to the muni­cipal gardener's conceptionof the ornamental.

Left: part of the sweepingrailings of Bedford Square.A. good example of aphysical hazard, well­designed and, in this case,well worth retaining.

planting

The important thing about the hedge or shrub as a

hazard is that it should be an uncompromisinglyphysical obstruction. Allow a thinness to developunderneath, and dogs, to whom the moral side of

this subject cannot be expected to appeal, will playhavoc with the landscapist's good intentions. Acareful choice of plant species is essential in the firstplace, and in the second proper upkeep and atten­tion. The planted hazard's thick green walls willeffectively screen the secluded inner heart so thatwhatever pleasure the landscapist has providedthere will come as a surprise, which, in itself, is animportant part of the English landscape technique.

concealed hazard

This hazard with an illustrious past has been almOStentirely ignored in the twentieth century. Developedfor enjoyment of the sweeping vista, the ha-ha, sub.stituted for the garden wall or hedge, revealed thatall nature was a garden and, what was gratifying, aJardin anglais. What has not been realized and actedupon is the fact that the ha-ha, dry or wet, is equallyeffective for the limited vista as for the distant one,It is well suited to solve many ofthe problems whichbeset the urban landscape architect. For the un.enclosed square, where the concealing mystery ofthe shrub or raised mound is not desired, it revealsthe prize, while at the same time enhancing itsappeal, by making it relatively hard to attain.

change of level

A device much used in the eighteenth century toprovide additional interest in a flat landscape wasthe raised hillock. Although in the hands of theimitators of Capability Brown it tended towardsmonotony owing to a similarity of outline in hismound-clump-belt technique, St James's Park andGreen Park in London have some good examples ofimaginatively landscaped changes of level. Themound is particularly useful if an area is endangeredby the ornamental 'municipal park' atmosphere. As ahazard the change oflevel is perhaps the most subtlypersuasive of them all, guiding the eye and the footwhere the landscapist wills, and substituting for thekeep-off notice a bank, which most people in a citywill avoid like the plague.

The Floor

When the railways came they built their own per­manent way linking town to town. Not so the internalcombustion vehicle which used roads and streetswhich already existed and doing so swept a specialpath for itself through all the towns of England. Onfirst inspection this would appear a natural develop­ment. Inhabitants of towns and villages can still dotheir shopping or visit each other's houses. But theriver of vehicles has damaged town life in one of itsless obvious but still essential senses. It has severelyrestricted the right offree assembly. To congregate,to be able to stop and chat, to feel free out of doorsmay not seem very important compared to thepressing needs of transport, but it is one of thereasons people live in town and not by themselves­to enjoy the pleasures of being sociable. Whereas thedistinction between in and out doors should be one

of degree and not kind, it has now become the dif­ference betwe.;:n sanctuary and exposure. Buildingsare gather.:d together but they do not form towns;one might almost as well build houses facing acrossa railway line.

There are two closely related aspects to the rightof assembly: the first is applied to the people wholive in a town and the second applies to the buildingswhich compose it. From the visual standpoint thegreatest single loss suffered is neutralization of thefloor, the space between buildings, which haschanged from a connecting surface to a dividingsurface. It has also changed from a particular to ageneralized surface.

The first reaction of a person who becomes awareof the value of the floor as potential scenery is todecorate it. Hence the flower-bedded traffic round­abouts. Hence also the somewhat arbitrary use ofcobbles to form decorative patterns which, thoughnot so flagrantly pretty, still originate from a desireto add decoration. The distinctive patterns formedby differing materials arise from use. Imagine usersof the floor acting in an instinctive or predestinedmanner and then plot their movements. The resultwill be a 'movement pattern' in which the use of thefloor is crystallized into shapes formed by differingcolours or textures which indicate action. These will

vary from the use of hazards (rough surfaces) to ac­cepted symbols (zebra striped crossings), and tonuances which can safely be transgressed except atcertain periodic functions. Further, these patterns if

128

commonly adopted will provide in two dimensionsthe service which today normally takes three.

I have already mentioned that the floor could be aconnecting surface between and around buildings. Ifit is to do so it cannot be a neutral ribbon of asphaltflanked by pavements. It must be considered anequal partner with the buildings and by the natureof its levels, scale, texture and general propriety,produce the effect of sociability and homogeneity.

But it cannot do this without itself having powerto move the emotions (otherwise it remains a no­man's-land, a dull spot in a bright scene. It is nogood running a slab of concrete between buildingsand, since it is continuous, hoping for homogeneity).The floor must contribute its own unique type ofdrama. In what particular quality does the secretand uniqueness of floorscape lie?

Does it, as some may suspect, lie solely in thecharms of weathering, wear and settlement? Or doesit lie in the variety of materials, many of which arenow obsolete for their traditional uses? I believe theessentials lie in neither.

(1) As opposed to buildings, whose volumes andmodelling are mainly geometric, the modellingof the floor is much more primitive and possiblymore subtle. It is a thin veneer of durablematerial covering the most powerful and naturalelement in the urban scene: the earth's un­dulation. This imparts to the floor an austerityand also an inconsequential waywardness.

(2) Due to the fact that it exists only as a surfaceall its work is done in two dimensions. It per­suades, segregates, emphasizes, joins, divides bysurface pattern. Could there be a more perfectfoil to the precise cubism of buildings thantextured and painted 'movement patterns' onthe deceptive flatness of the floor?

(3) More than any other device in townscape itpossesses the quality of expanse or extension.This quality can be seen not only in the vastpaved square but in the little flagged strip thatdisappears round the corner. The first is theaffirmation, the second a hint.

(4) Lastly we mention materials and make thepoint that the work they must do means thatthey must have durability and weight. It im­poses a certain discipline on the make-up ofthe floor and it is this which gives to the floor itsfinal character.

The following pages demonstrate the points onwhich this case rests. The illustrations are from onetown, Woodstock in Oxfordshire.

Woodstock unwinding

adventure

The justification for thissection is to draw attentionto the dramatic scenery ofthe floor and to reveal itsindependent private life. Itis not just something thatbuildings stand on and carstravel across, it has acharacter and vitalitypeculiarly its own, longneglected.

functional pattern

The difficulty of drivingover cobbles makes themat once an obvious surfacefor stationary vehicles.Obvious not to the de­signer but to the motoristwho is not tempted to useit. The beginning of patternbased on function.

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13°

standardizing the code

The pavement takes aplunge across the road.Clear warning is given bythe path of setts to bothpedestrian and traffic. Theband of cobbles acts as awarning buffer betweenflagstone and tarmac. Justone example of how variedmaterials could, if stand­ardized, give a visual High­way Code, establishingconventions, behavioursand frontiers.

materialsA coherent scene but com­posed of seven differentelements unified by acommon surface, andclarity of function. Cobblesare suppressed in theshopping area, on the wallside of the pavement, toallow more elasticiry ofmovement and use.

articulation

Articulation of movementby intensifying the con­trast of surface and in­troducing directional tech­niques. The street is thesame but the shops havegiven way to houses-socobbles return to each sideof the paving. The resultestablishes the independ­ence of the floor frombuildings.

relax

The not-too-urban scenein which we see the twoaspects of free assemblyfor people and for build­ings. The small, free pathis set in a buffer zone; itscasual gutters, its trees inthe roadway express theinformal domestic natureof the neighbourhood.Contrast this with thedullards' solution, thestandard layout appliedabstractedly to .all streets,urban or otherwise, allow­ing no tolerances and re­ducing all urban variationsto uniformity.

131

Opposite page: a victim of prairie planning tracesout his public protest, the reminder of a properlyconcentrated town.

Open country is the goal of the victim of industrialsqualor, with the dream house, I, that sits in it,

4 framed by trees that lean down low over the ninebean rows to the radio strains of Bless this House.Architecture ... impeccable if traditional.

Here we see the birth of a street full of suchhouses. 2, Sish Lane, Stevenage, as it was andstill is beyond the development line. 3, the newalignment appears ... and with it the magic fadesas the dream houses 4, multiply to the horizon.AAAA ... 0000 ... What has happened?

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3

Prairie Planning

If I were asked to define townscape I would saythat one building is architecture but two buildings istownscape. For as soon as two buildings are juxta­posed the art of townscape is released. Such prob­lems as the relationship between the buildings andthe space between the buildings immediately assumeimportance. Multiply this to the size of a town andyou have the art of environment; the possibilities ofrelationship increase, manoeuvres and ploys pro­liferate. Even a small congregation of buildings canproduce drama and spatial stimulation. But lookingat the kind of towns and housing estates built byspeculators or local authorities one is forced to con­

clude that this conception oftownscape has not beenconsidered (to put it very mildly). We are still in the

2 elementary stage where the individual building is thebe-all and the end-all of planning. If buildings arethe letters of the alphabet they are not used to makecoherent words but to utter the monotonous deso­late cries of AAAAA! or OOOOO! What of the newtowns designed by contemporary architects to breakthe bad old AAAA-OOOO stranglehold? Here theyare viewed against this yardstick.

1

·.,irWWO .",...

57

The character that develops from isolationism can

be appreciated from the air view of part of theAdeyfield neighbourhood of Hemel Hempstead NewTown, 5, which shows so generous a use, or ratherun-use, of land that the unfortunate housewife isreduced to using travelling shops, 6, for her shopping.One can 'understand these being necessary in theCanadian prairie, but in a small English town whatcan they signify except that the scale of developmenthas got completely out of hand-or rather out of

134

foot? Another by-product of this same giantism ofscale is the problem of what to do with ,all the landthat isn't built on, 7 (Stevenage). Roads?-roadsonly need to be narrow. Pavements then?-if thestreets are narrow the pavements must be vast­vast enough for all the shoppers of Oxford Street;but at ten shillings a square yard? Surely not. Grassthem?-but grass has to be cut. Flower beds?­upkeep again, 8 (Hemel).Alas whatever it is the main impression of prairie

planning is that of vasmess, the feeling that the littletwo-storey houses are far too puny and temporaryto match up to the monumental, overpoweringspace. The last thing it does is suggest a stroll; theunhappy pedestrian is left with a feeling of hope­lessness in face of a terrifying infinity of widenesspunctuated at intervals by seas of concrete. It mustbe made clear that the carping note of these obser­vations is not directed at architects, since in themain the buildings themselves are successful, andin the layout the architects are the victims of theircommittees who have somehow got this bee ofdispersal into their bonnets-the idea that it is notquite nice to have a neighbour, that the ideal townis one that will fill-<>r empty-a prairie, 9(Stevenage).

One of the essential qualities of a town is that it isa gathering together of people and utilities for the

9

generation of civic warmth. However overcrowded,dingy, insanitary and airless the old towns may bemost of them retain this quality, which is theessential quality without which a town is no town,with which lack of air is merely a minor nuisance­let us call it towniness. Where has it got to in thenew towns? Or are the new towns merely intendedto negative the old towns and so negative towniness?We see no sign of it here. Instead we see the growthof a new ideal at work which might be described asebbiness-the ebb tide: the cult of isolationism. It

is as though the drive to the'country has beenundertaken by people all studiously avoiding eachother and pretending that they are alone. The resultis a paradox, the paradox of concentrated isolation,~he direct antithesis of towniness, which resultsfrom the social impulse. Turning from physicalisolationism to what might be called psychologicalisolationism a revealing example is the treatment of

135

10,12,14

136

11,13,15

an old church in Harlow New Town, 10. Theplanners have clearly tried to exploit the potentiali­ties of this existing feature, but one would havethought that such a building would have beenseized upon as a focus to rouse and rally newdevelopment, providing the kind of rallying pointthe church has always provided in English townplanning. Instead it has been isolated in green fields,when even God asks for no more than one acre; andall the houses turn their back on it. So much so

that even the nice views of it (though cut offabruptly), II, look accidental. Next, a row of shopsin Stevenage, 12, shows how another centre ormeeting place has been thrown to the winds. It isblandly self-effacing, simply continuing the row ofhouses. What should be a point of congregationbecomes an extended line, dispersing the group andpaying homage to the queuing principle. Anotherfacet of this disintegration can be seen in thehouses at Hemel, 13. Where house types vary, arelationship develops between the buildings whichmay be turned to good use in bringing the sceneto life. One feels that the buildings are in cahoots.By contrast, when buildings are identical, withoutregard to direction or levels, we do not get unitybut a sulky, resentful monotony. AAA ... 000... The last example is of the neighbourhoodcentre at Adeyfield, Hemel Hempstead, 14, wherewe have the welcome appearance of a square whichsensibly contains shops, pub, cinema and church.Yet instead of the square being the culminationof the neighbourhood, the centre, hub and vortex,it is placed to one side avoiding, so far as possible,a direct relationship with the houses it serves, 15.

Interlude at Blanchland

The new towns illustrated here are dead against the

whole tradition of English town planning, or any

town planning. English town planning has been

more open than European in the past, but this kindof openness refutes and frustrates the whole idea of

town. By contrast, BlancWand in Northumberland,

though no more than a village, has evident urbanqualities. Based on the air view overleaf, the follow­

ing sequence of views has been sketched to illustrate

the essential points.

16, approach. The gap reveals urbanity in theCountryside.17, entry and the way through is blocked by thebuilding opposite which suggests enclosure and ahint of space yet to be revealed.18, on turning the corner the space surprisinglyextends, terminating in a beckoning black opening.

16

17

137

139

22,23

19, in this enclosure we find one side busy withshops and the wide pavement filled with stalls onmarket day.20, whilst, turning back, the domestic enclave isrevealed.21, the exit. Again, we are not presented with aninterminable vista but by one blocked by buildings.

Compare the two air views on the right, the one ofBlanchland, 22, and the other of the proposed towncentre of Crawley, 23. The approaches to planningseem to be diametrically opposed. In the first thevillage centre is treated as an urban space incontrast to the surrounding countryside; it has notrees and it is paved. It establishes itself as man­made and orderly. Furthermore the buildings havebeen arranged to create a sense oi enclosure, ofcosiness, and of drama in the progressive revealingof space and use. These things are the stuff oftowns. For a more recent example the reader isreferred to Well Hall Estate, Eltham, built in 1915,p. 164. The approach at Crawley appears to be a purerecoil from the physical conditions of traffic jamsand overcrowding in the metropolis. In this itprobably succeeds. And yet of tension, drama,enclosure, surprise, there appears to be none. All theelements are there but the insistence on isolation issuch that we are left with what we started with: acollection of roads, trees and buildings. Instead oftownscape we have tree worship; instead of punc­tuated streets, AAAA, 0000, instead of a con­ception of the town as a homely, folksy living placewhere citizens can get together to drink, play, talk,and grow old as partakers in the greatest of all theprivileges of civilization, social intercourse, we haveebbiness; the theory that everybody else stinks andso you must have as much room as possible between.

Translated into town planning jargon this qualityof ebbiness becomes low-density housing-theresults are deplorable-foot-sore housewives, cycle­weary workers, never-ending characterless streets,the depressing feeling of being a provincial or sub­urbanite in an environment that doesn't belong totown or country, and the impossibility of evergetting into the real country which this suburbansprawl has banished. End result-travelling shopsand high rates to pay for acres of unnecessarypavements at twenty-five shillings a square yard.To sum up, the New Towns, except for ratherbetter house plans, have advanced but little on theold housing estates. In the sense that they tend tooccupy more valuable land they are actually a stepback. Regarded as what their name claims for them,new towns, in spite of all the administrative energy,publicity and cash expended on them, what shouldhave been a great adventure has come to nothingand less than nothing-and so far with hardly aword spoken in protest...,....

20

19

Rule of Thumb

The curse of the English landscape is the absenteelandlord. The old landlord, the man who created it,has been taxed out of existence and the new land­lord, local and national authority, lives in town orsuburb. Consequently that sense of personal re­sponsibility arising from a knowledge and love of aparticular piece of countryside is missing and isreplaced by a generally beneficent but remote con­trol: the difference between a parent and a fosterparent. (How often do we come across some villagewhich at once stands out from the general run ofuntidy, outraged and decaying hamlets by its trimand homogeneous air, and discover that it is still theresponsibility of a family.)

Add to this the fact that authority, almost bydefinition, is more interested in the art of govern­ment than the art of landscape, then what happensto the landscape will be the political resultant of thevarious pressure groups involved. On the one handthere are the pressures arising from the necessity fornew housing, power stations, power lines, railwayelectrification, military installations, airfields, carparks and roads, radio transmitters, mining andquarrying, etc. And on the other hand are thepressures exerted by the preservation groups suchas the C.P.R.E.

It is not surprising therefore that authority, in itsattempt to resolve these pressures into a single re­sultant, will evolve certain broad principles which,by and large, work or make the best of a bad job:rule-of-thumb planning. This, however, cannot bemore than an alibi for imaginative design. It iscarried out by absentee landlords who have only amarginal knowledge of the art of landscape. In thenature of things it is bound to lead to abuse andoutrage. Perhaps this can be clarified by a homelysimile. Generally speaking the Smith family have aroast of lamb on Sunday. Mrs Smith, however, is agood shopper and if the quality of the lamb on aparticular day is poor she buys something else. MrsSmith falls ill and Mr Smith does the shopping. Heknows next to nothing about shopping but he doesknow they generally have roast lamb on Sunday.Hence he insists on buying a leg of lamb that turnsout to be a disaster. Rule-of-thumb shopping is nosubstitute for skilful shopping; neither is rule-of­thumb planning an effective substitute for the prac­tice of the art oflandscape. Fortunately the country­side has not yet been entirely abandoned. There arestill those 'village Hampdens' who have humbly

140

studied their own bit of countryside and are pre­pared to defend it against the steamroller let looseby rule-of-thumb planning. Here is such a case.

Bingham's Me!combe, the Dorset country house,is comfortable and snug. It has great charm in itselfand nestles informally in a spacious valley. The factthat it is a scheduled building is an indication of itsrecognized worth. The valley itself is of great beautyand it also, according to our information, has beenrecommended for scheduling as being of 'the highestlandscape value'. But these are not two separatethings, building and valley. If you destroy the settingyou lessen the building, and by the same token ifyou replace the building by a gasworks you devaluethe valley. On the owner's land, and closing the viewof the valley, a completely incongruous row of villaswas clearly visible. He has planted a clump ofchestnuts to screen them and so preserve the senseof unity. Battle was joined with corrugated iron.

The next threat, and it is with this that we arehere concerned, arose when it was learnt that theCentral Electricity Authority proposed to bring anew 132 kV line through the valley, since it hap­pened to be on the route between Poole and Yeovil.As a result of meetings between the three interestedparties, the owner, the County Planning Office andthe Central Electricity Authority, an alternativeroute which avoided the valley and passed throughmore elevated arable country with few habitationswas agreed on. An agreement which was subse­quently rescinded and at the time this was writtenthat was how the matter rested.

It doesn't make sense. At least, it doesn't makesense until you realize that the local authority istrying to preserve the amenities of Dorset, and allthe indications are that the particular rule of thumbapplied here is that since pylons are offensive theymust be hidden. Consequently they must avoid theskyline and at all costs pass through valleys. You'vegot to have roast lamb on Sunday even if it poisonsyou. Quite clearly the power line should avoid thevalley and pass along the alternative route. If this isdone it will be established that no longer is the un­critical enforcement of rule of thumb to be tolerated,

even though it is undertaken with the best will inthe world.

Note: rule of thumb lost the battle. The pylon linenow runs three miles to the north, well clear of Bing­ham's Me/combe and its valley.

...•...

Top left, the scene today. In the foreground is Bing­ham's Melcombe. We are looking in the direction ofits main prospect which is marred by distant villasand farm buildings. Top right, the owner has plantedchestnuts which, in time, will screen these buildingsand preserve the unity. But all would be con­founded if the proposed power line were to beerected, left. The suggested diversion simply takesadvantage of the contours to protect the house andvalley from the outrage of wires. The alternative toa valley route is not necessarily a route which clingsto the highest ground; it is the alternative to rule ofthumb, and it is to exploit the contours and naturalfeatures with skill and ingenuity.

141

142

RULE OF THUMB

View from the garden ofBingham's Melcombe,showing how pylons wouldmar the setting of an im­portant and scheduledcountry house.

The pylons accompanyingthe valley road. Rule ofthumb planning ensuresthat they would be seen bymost people most of thetime.

View in the valley showinghow the pastoral scenewould be shattered by thepylons which, incidentally,due to the desirability forstraight runs, would clipcorners and necessitate thefelling of trees.

....•...

ADAPTABILITY

The pylons would affectthis one house, but if it isa choice of evils there arefew who could seriouslymaintain that this is thegreater.

The road for a great partof its route is screened bya tall hedge, thus cuttingout any view of the pylonbehind.

Where the hedge stops theline of pylons would behidden by the slope of thehill, as illustrated in thediagram. It is this sort ofcareful landscaping weneed in place of rule ofthumb.

143

Street Lighting

Here we are concerned with the impact of a modernpublic lighting installation on towns and not,primarily, with the design of fittings. Naturally it isimpossible to disassociate the two since, as in alltownscape, we are concerned with two aspects: first,intrinsic design and second, the relationship orputting together of things designed. Still, for thetime being let us give thanks to the hard work putin by the Council of Industrial Design on the im­provement of fitting design and concentrate here onthe total effect of installations.

There are two sides to the problem: the lightingengineer's requirements, the demand of amenity ortownscape.

Recent (post-war) installations in Great Britainare based on the principle of silhouene vision orsurface brightness of the road. To imitate daylight­whereby the road surface and objects on it are seenthree-dimensionally and in colour-being econo­mically impossible the alternative is to use a lowerintensity of light, to reflect light off the road surfaceevenly so that any object on it is seen as a silhouenewhich the eye can interpret as man, dog, car,hazard, etc. (As set out in the British Standard Codeof Practice CP 10°4: 1952.)

The system relies on the even illumination of theroad surface; there must be no pools of darkness. Toachieve this the light sources must be placed andsited with some accuracy in relation to one another,especially on curves.

Height, overhang and siting begin to have a certaininevitability. Add to this the Code of Practice recom­mendations relating to mounting heights (of lan­terns) for Group A (25 ft.) and Group B (IS ft.) roadsand we have in all its authority and inevitability amodern lighting installation, which marches througha town like a posse of soldier ants.

Now turn to the towns cape side of the problem.There is an obvious incompatibility between theruthless and rigid installation and the actual con­dition of our towns and villages. Broadly speakingthere are three demands which the townscaper putsto the engineer.

To achieve: Unity of scaleKinetic unityPropriety.

Unity of scale: The installation should be in scalewith the street or environment. To flout this rule will

result in an installation either drawing attention toitself by reason of its overpowering height or bulkand making the buildings appear silly and doll-like,

144

or as in the case of Kingsway, p. 146, failing to makethat contribution to the intricacy of the scene (whicha good installation ought to do) by being too small,and insignificant.

Kinetic unity: By this is meant the unity of move­ment. Most installations, of co~rse, are in streetswhich to a large extent express motion in a straightline. But as students of towns cape are aware thereare many other kinds of urban enclosure: square,crescent, circus, focal point, closure, etc., whichexpress a static feeling. In such places it is importantthat the installation, especially by daylight, shouldnot disrupt and destroy this static quality by drivinga monument to motion through them.

Propriety: There are times and places where it isdifficult to reconcile an orthodox installation with

the scene at all. One thinks of some new bridge, apiece of reinforced concrete sculpture, and try as onemay the orthodox illumination by means of lightsources placed on posts seems to destroy the scene.One thinks also of such places as the RadcliffeCamera group in Oxford and again finds it hard toreconcile ordinary practice with the particular case.In other words, as our examples will show, fromtime to time some solution out of the ordinary iscalled for even if it means some sacrifice and a

challenge to ingenuity.If, therefore, the townscaper puts these points

forward as essential for the creation and preservationof urban values and at the same time the lightingengineer maintains that 'efficient lighting' comesfirst and no compromise is possible then we havereached deadlock. Fortunately the situation is notstatic. Even assuming the continued validity ofsilhouette vision the insistence, in the Code ofPractice, of 25 ft. and IS ft. mounting heights forlamps for Group A and Group B roads respectivelyappears to be the imposition of a rule rather for thesake of having a rule than anything else. Quiteclearly the essential is to achieve uniform surfacebrightness, not to say how this is to be achieved.However, the system met its Waterloo at Marl­borough (Wilts) where a precedent was created.Although the High Street is a Group A road thelight sources were mounted at a height of 20 ft. inorder to preserve unity of scale at the insistence ofthe Royal Fine Art Commission. Furthermore,silhouette vision is, in itself, an unsatisfactory formof illumination. If one silhouette is behind another

silhouette then only one shape can be seen and thuswe get the danger of motorists being unable to anti-

---

cipate people stepping out from behind buses. But

already more powerful light sources are beingmarketed which approximate much more to normalthree-dimensional vision. The advent of these lightsources must surely challenge the whole intricatestructure of silhouette vision layouts. For the moreabundant the light the more flexible one can affordto be with the installation layout.

The moral of all this is now becoming clear. Whatwe put forward is a plea for flexibility. Once thelighting engineer understands towns cape, the urbanscene, then he immediately responds, he mani­pulates light. For no one knows better than theengineer just how flexible his solutions can be. To

regard the design of a lighting installation as anexact science is, I think, putting it a little high, andresults in doctrinaire decisions. To regard an in­stallation as a separate piece of construction to thefabric of the town will inevitably result in abuse andlost opportunities, and to regard the light as beingof a different kind of light to that provided by shopwindows, floodlighting, private lighting and so oncan only result in sterility of scenery.

What we need to do is to integrate street lightingwith the fabric and character of the town, both byday and by night, to manipulate light and the lightsources in the full knowledge and love of our townsand cities.

1

code of practice

Silhouette vision wherebythe surface brightness ofthe road reveals objects onit as a silhouette is ad­mittedly second best. Toilluminate in three dimen­sions was regarded as im­practical; 1 shows theabsurdity of trying toachieve normal vision byartificial lighting. Hencethe Code of Practice basedon Silhouette Vision, 2, andits often brutal and in- 2sensitive impact on towns,3, this is the world whereeverything is its own lawand where nothing is seenin relationship.

3

145

kinetic unity

Kinetic unity is perhapsmore complex to appre­ciate but of vital import­ance to the impact of theenvironment. Left, 10, wesee a village scene, theshopping street is givenenclosure (a sense of per­sonality) by the re-entrantbuildings and beyond thebridge the vista is closedby trees. The scene is staticwhereas the installation, II,bores a hole right throughit. The kinetic unity isbroken.

147

10

11

~

the townscape unities: scale

Everyone wants good light­ing. We believe that respectfor the environment doesnot preclude good lighting.There are three demandsthe townscaper makes ofthe engineer. The first isto observe scale. The ideais simple enough; examplesof light fittings of suitablescale to the environmentare shown above at Hat­field, 4, Dulwich, 5, andPimlico, 6. Below: hereare three failures, two,7 and 8, in which the fit­tings are too large and onewhere it is too small andinsignificant, Kingsway, 9.

54

6,78,9

146

....•... Itowards flexibility

Once the basic townscapeis appreciated then thedrive towards flexibilitybegins.

Marlborough has recentlyinstalled 20-ft. light fit­tings, 15 (as opposed toCode of Practice 25 ft., 16).17 and 18 show that theroad surface can be evenlylit with lamps at varyingheights.

149

20, after

Experimental lightingnear St Pancras shows theuse of new and powerfullamps, and suggests thatwe are moving away fromthe theory of silhouettevision, 19 and 20.

15,16

19, before

proprietyThere are cases where theorthodox installation is notwanted at all, where thepuri ty of the scene cannotbe improved by an in­stall,ation yet light isneeded. At the Pont duCarrousel in Paris theyhave lights on telescopicmasts which are raised atnight. Above, 12, on thebridge over the Meuse atDinant the lighting isbuilt into the handrail (seesection). At the RadcliffeCamera in Oxford, 13, onewould like to see the onlypossible solution, flood­lighting, 14. All thesevarious solutions will infact cost a little extra. Weexpect that flexibility ofapproach for the vital5 per cent.

1413

25cm

148

12

From Vienna we quote Dr Leopold Fink, on theexact placing of lights, left: 'The shadows underthe canopy and on the steps introduce the shapingquality and the light on the flowers the friendlyelement in this picture. Any change in theposition of the lamp would spoil this impression.The experienced man in charge of town lightingshould know the locations where such effects canbe achieved. He will know them when he loveshis town and his task.'

to urban scenery. At night it has created a newlandscape of a kind never before seen in history.Strange patterns hover in the sky, enormous signsrelay the news, lights flash, stream and swoop, hold­ing the man in the street spellbound, but leaving theplanner, it would seem, unmoved. That it must bezoned with discretion goes without saying; that thesort of improprieties shown in the drawings above

Below: Broadway, vulgarand vital; to be emulatedrather than imitated (see p. 8S).

Above: Strictly to be avoided.

Outdoor Publicity

One contribution to modern towns cape, startlinglyconspicuous everywhere you look, but almost en­tirely ignored by the town planner, is Street pub­licity. Search as you may through the perspectivesof the new towns-to-be, and you will be hard put toit to find an advertisement. And yet of all things,this is the most characteristic, and, potentially, themost valuable, contribution of the twentieth century

by sodium fog lamps on traffic island. Square infront of town hall lit by 2S-ft. posts and wall­mounted lamps on bus station. Floodlit advertising.Blocks of flats floodlit. War memorial lit frombelow decorative water. Curtain wall building carriesbuilt-in street lighting and is internally lit at night.

flexibility

Below we feature, with pleasure, a model preparedby two lighting engineers, C. R. Bicknell, M.C.,B.Sc., A.K.C., F.I.E.S., and J. T. Grundy, toillustrate their lecture on public lighting to theAssociation of Public Lighting Engineers. Believingthat the visual impact, by day and by night, of aninstallation is just as important as its scientificvirtue, they have made their points in this model.

21

The two pictures below, 22 and 23, show the samescene with different lighting effects. From left to right:Road with 20-ft. columns so that trees can bepreserved. Vista closed by stained glass churchwindow. 3S-ft. vertical lantern acting as ceacon formotorists at main cross roads. Wall-mounted lightson small foreground building. Church tower lit up

ISO

must be prevented is obvious. But to dismiss en­tirely the whole field of publicity when landscapingnew towns would seem to be an act of genteelismreminiscent of the days when the designer ignoredeverything that didn't fall into line with his ownprivate taste.

The four main objections commonly put forwardagainst street advertisements are:

1. Advertisements are incongruous and thereforeinjurious to amenity.

2. They exploit the public highway and the publichas no choice but to take notice of them.

3. They vulgarize public environment and de­grade public taste.

4. They distract the attention of motorists androad users.

152

It is worth while taking these points one by one,since they can be taken as typical of most of theobjections to outdoor publicity in town or country.

Point I. The White Horse of Uffington and theGiant of Cerne Abbas are incongruous. When youfirst see them they give you a shock. Yet they do notdetract from the landscape, they give point to it byincongruity of scale. But if the White Horse wereadvertising whisky and the worthy Giant a brand ofrejuvenator, that would be incongruous in a differentsense. Thus we have two kinds of incongruity, onevisual and one ethical. Returning to the city, toVanity Fair with its busy streets and markets, itstheatres and dance halls, the second type of incon­gruity magically disappears. People still like to buyand sell, to proclaim and to notice. It is part of our

This page and opposite:The decoration of build­ings by illustrative orwritten publicity. This maybe ordered or fanciful, andeither way creates an effectof intricacy of colour andform which can be de­lightful.

-...~- .,

civilization. Publicity is accepted as a normalelement of modern city life. We are thus left withvisual incongruity and surely that is something thetownscaper should hasten to accept as a valuable aid.If it is possible for the reader to regard the city as aman-made landscape then let us try to translate thewhite horses and giants of the hills int0 a publicitywhich is just as integral with bricks and mortar.

Point 2. That publicity exploits the public high­way is perfectly true but it would be difficult to findother places where it might conveniently be situated.

Point 3. Publicity degrades public taste. Butpublic taste is already vulgar and also has the one

'--

;

merit of vulgarity, i.e. vitality. To put publicity intoa strait-jacket, to restrain it, will not improvepublic taste but simply kill off its vitality. The solu­tion surely is to let the public express its vulgarity,for expression is itself a form of education. In thisway the public and its publicity will improvetogether.

Point 4. Publicity distracts the attention of motor­ists. In so far as it does it is harmful, and this pointmust be kept in mind by the towns caper, but thedanger is often over-exaggerated by the anti­publicity faction.

153

J

Above: an extension of the technique used in somewartime exhibitions in exploiting sites. The dramaticchange of scale of the Cerne Abbas giant is heretranslated into the fabric of the city.Below right: change of scale; the modest house isturned into the bijou by large lettering. Sometimesunsuccessful, but full of visual possibilities.Below left: back-drop to everyday life.

...••...

The Wall

All activities conform to some extent to the toler­

ances of propriety and what we do with walls is noexception. Yet the first aspect of wallscape we corneacross is the extraction of the utmost effect con­

sistent with such tolerances. Thus, to quote a tradi­tional example, one may see a wall built of flints, thesmall rounded stones forming a pleasing texture. Asfar as this wall is concerned the main thing is textureand to this end it is whitewashed, it is not grey or redor blue but white, since this extracts the maximumlight and shade value out of the texture. Within thelimitation of the local builder's materials and thepropriety of street architecture this is the maximumeffect possible. It will be found true, I believe, of allsuccessful wallscape that this ultimate effect isachieved in one way or another.

This then is the first aspect of display; the second,which may well be but a different facet of this, isconcerned with what one might call the challenge ofempty space. This is a very simple idea but not easyto explain without running the risk of misinterpreta­tion. The danger is that of being thought an ad­vocate of decoration in which the true significanceof a structure is camouflaged in irrelevant surfacetreatment. The fact remains that the empty surface

presents an opportunity, a temptation to those withbuilding in their blood, just as a sparkling whitepiece of paper presents adventure to an artist. Theproper control seems to be found in the emphasisor paraphrasing of function. The diaper, for in­stance, was probably evoked by its playful butdramatic exaggeration of traditional structure. Buttoday with different methods of construction thechallenge of emptiness can be met in other and moreappropriate ways. The meander is having success atthe moment; it is non-directional and greedy ofspace and can be applied to the slab building whereit echoes the poise and homogeneity of this form ofconstruction.

The mural painting as it is commonly accepted,e.g. the enlarged easel painting, does not comewithin the scope of this survey although every wall­scape is, in a sense, a mural painting.

But, to be clear, in the sense that the word is usedherewallscape derives from the intrinsic construction,whether it be the reflections on glass, the pattern of asteel frame or the paraphrasing of construction.

A visual description of these points, compiledfrom both modern and traditional examples, will befound on the following pages.

155

seeing in detail

Let us isolate a piece ofwall, left, take it out ofits context and regard thefragment as a picture. Bydoing so we may be able torid ourselves of many ofthe reactions to wallscapewhich are more proper toplanning or to construction,reactions which prevent ususing the painter's eye.What are the qualities ofthe picture? They arequalities of colour andtextur~, shadow andpattern and a sense of theinherent strangeness ofstructural and mechanicalshapes.

Where a wall is speciallyprepared to be looked at,covered with a tapestry ora mural painting, it isgenerally admired and givenattention. If walls arelooked at as pictures (asin these illustrations)then to a large extent theybecome pictures, abstractto be sure, but no longertrivial or empty.

catching the eyeA curious picture,obviously a blatant bit offace-lifting, but includedto underline the essentialquality of scenic-display inwallscape. It is as thoughthe plastic qualities weredetermined to be seen-tobe noticed-and had bursttheir conventional boundsoffering themselves to thestreet.

In the following ex­amples the theme of thewall as a painting or abas-relief is developedwith examples whichdemonstrate the positivenature of good wallscape.To find a concise wordfor this is difficult.Display already has aheavy load of meaningwhilst scenery appears toonegative for the inventions,the affirma tions to be seen.

I, the opposite of drab­ness-black and white,polished brass doorstep,tile enrichment. This is agesture to the street, de­signed to be looked at. Itis composed of structuralelements and the most has

1 been made of them.

2, 3

4, 5

158

2, the contrast betweendisplay and indifference.

3, instead of uniformtreatment the wall is madeto sparkle by emphasizingcontrasting textures.

4, the sunlight pours

down, what more simple(if you are thinking alongthose lines) than to stick apiece of wood into the wetplaster and take advantageof the sunshine.

5, the wall as a tapestry.

exploiting the surface

Two examples of inventedpattern, 6 and 7, thefretted bargeboard anddoorway. By the use ofdevices sanctioned for thisparticular time and place,scenes have been createdwhich grip the eye-aroof line, a plinth, a doorsurround and a pillar inrelief. The intention isclear: by paraphrasingfunctional motifs theempty space has beenbrought to life. The eyedoes not slip off but is

6 intrigued, and this not bythe natural texture, butby invented pattern.Further examples are tobe found overleaf.

7

159

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8,9

10,11

This aspect of wallscapeimplies a greater degree ofvisual ingenuity. Herethe emphasis is on theprimitive desire to fillemptiness, although ideason what constitutes empti­ness have obviously variedduring the ages.

Given an empty surfacethe easiest way of filling itis by the flowing, cursiveline reminiscent of a child'sscrawl. Not surprisinglythe example, 8, is ofpargetting, an ancient ruralart. 9 is a contemporaryversion of the same ideafrom the Paris Exhibitionof 1937.

Two examples of themasonry motif. 10, light­heartedly and with smallattention to realism, usesthe device of trompe l'oeilto simulate stone andmakes of it a very power­ful piece of scenery. II ismidway between textureand invented pattern, forthe joints, being exag­gerated, create a lineardesign which becomes thedominant impression.

...'"...

making the most of itSTONE: Gone are the dayswhen stone was used as aload-bearing material on alarge scale. Instead it ismore often used now as aveneer. Here, in 12,such a wall is presented toview uncomplicated byfenestration or deviationfrom the rectangle. Anotheraspect of stone in modemwork is its use as a foil tostructure, a rich and noblefoil the archetype of whichcan be seen in 13, a tradi­tiona~ example showingtwo distinctive treatments.Both form lively patterns,the one consisting of stoneforming an incident inmortar and the qther­mortar forming a patternin stone.BRICK: This structure, 14,achieves an effect of monu­mentality by the insistentrepetition of one small unit-the brick-and by veryslight movements of pro­jection and recession re­lated to the scale of thatunit.PAINT: Perhaps more thanany other finish paint lendsitself to the display aspectof wallscape. One of thedelights of London is thesight of freshly oil-paintedstucco terraces that gleamand sparkle in the springsun, 15 is in the sametradition .

centred on the wind by avane, so that no draughtis felt, and what sun thereis will be able to heat byradiation. It is made ofmoulded perspex with analuminium vane, fixed on abronze track; it is suitablefor gardens, flat roofs,promenades, piers, in fact,anywhere. e, carries theidea further, with radiantheat in the ceiling. Themore personal swivel-tiltchair, g, likef, is in perspexand aluminium.

Air-conditioned shelters.These can be of variouskinds. The simplest beinga modification of thenatural shelter by intro­ducing radiant heat fromthe roof, f, with clean air.On the pier, the park, theSouth Bank, LeicesterSquare or Prince'sGardens, sixpence in theslot lets you in for twohours synthetic sunshine,and the rain on the road­way is the ocean providinga free spectacle outside.

Mechanical shelters. Anordinary window may becalled a mechanical sheltersince one shuts it in verycold or stormy weather.There are many activities,such as dancing and eating,which are perfectly possiblein the open in fine weather.Revolving or sliding struc­tures, already in operationat such cafes as the Coli seein the Champs Elysees,allow the maximum use ingood and bad weather.For example, h, i, a dancehall with revolving wall;j, k, a restaurant and barwith sliding walls. On theplan j, x x x indicatessliding glass doors; cross­hatching, bar or servery;dots, sitting space; arrows,ramps.

163

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Natural shelters. In a tem­perate climate the maindeterrents to sitting outare wind and rain. Even inwinter the temperature isnot always so low as tomake sitting in still airdisagreeable. The questionarises, why not construct ashelter that relies on main­taining still air and ex­cluding rain whilst pre­venting a fug? The con­traption shown here, d, is

where it is the privilege of the man-in-the-street tosit and contemplate it-in which is contained almostall we mean by the magic word continental. Thereason lies not in the English character but in theEnglish climate, and nothing much could be doneabout that, until the age of technics, except totransfer the outside world to the inside as the

Georgians sometimes did (at Ranelagh or at theLeicester Square Rotunda). Today, however, thereis practically nothing we can't do about climate.The significance of this has yet to be realized. Alittle ingenuity in our bad-weather-fighting appara­tus would bring us suddenly from worst-weather tobest-weather addicts, since rain and cloud and gleamof sunshine-not to mention the mist and fog thatbrought Monet and his Impressionist friends flock­ing to London to wallow in its effects-becomespectacular enjoyments the moment one is freedfroin the necessity of diving for shelter indoors. Thisis a particularly English problem; it is no good foronce leaving it until some American has a brightidea. What is wanted is an offensive (by the special­ists concerned) for all-weather gadgets that willmake living outdoors a pleasure in the Englishwinter. The suggestions that follow don't exhaustthe possibilities; they are more like doodles set downin print to lure the garden-and pier-furnituredesigners into the open.

cb

d

Prototypes a, b and carefamiliar English devicesfor enjoying 'out there',under adverse weatherconditions. a, is ingenious,but tends to become im­mobilized either by rust orclimbing plants. b, is ex­pensive in money andspace. c, is charming butnot very practical, sincewind and rain make most-of its compartments use­less for much of the year.

162

a

The English Climate

The desire to carryon the normal activities of livingin a natural environment is romantic: picnics, camp­ing out and open-air dancing. Despite his beard thegentleman above, who resembles Rameses, is a boyat heart. The city, too, is full of beauty and drama,traffic, crowds, the river and a host of things. Buthow often do we get a chance to sit and look at them?Contradictory as it may sound a few cities look out,most look in; each little cell is self-contained inEnglish cities, and few English people realize thechasm that exists between their own in-lookingcities and the outward-looking ones of Europe,

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to the street, (as opposen to the

tain parts the houses are built up

~sy to the splendid isolation school,

ds in prod1lcing urbsn character.

The estate fails, however, on the scoreis an overwhelming need for shops or

people lead a social life. One keeps

the inn sign which never comes.

Not a tree was removed from the site and this

sketch shows how a~as been used to form ~enclosure to a section of the road which sweepsround it.

General Note

If bye-laws can be described as legal

abstractions formed out of a variety

of precedents then we may say that in ,.both this layout and Redgrave Road. the;

architects have put the variety backinto the abstractions. For in bothcases use was made of waivers on build·

lines without which the schemes would

not have succeeded.

Architects.

Mr. (later SIR FRANK) BAINES,A. J. PITCHER, G. E. PHILLIPSJ. A. BOWDEN and G. PARKER.

Eltham, built in 1915. The second, built in 1953, isRedgrave Road, Basildon. Though small it is a copy­book example of the kind of peaceful revolution thatcan be achieved in a bye-law wilderness by a positivevisual policy. A prototype not only provides thedesigner with a yardstick against which to measurehis endeavour, it comes as an unlooked-for butreassuring handshake to the designer who may feelhe is working in isolation. These examples are justsuch prototypes and as such qualify for any town­design casebook.

Casebook Precedents

If not yet a popular art, townscape could legitimatelybe called a new art in the sense that it has never been

practised before on a nation-wide scale. That, how­ever, isn't to say that its principles have never beenapplied in this century by individual architects ofsensibility and insight. A careful combing out ofhousing schemes and garden suburbs would revealthe work of a number of otherwise little known

planners. Here for the record are two. The first,already singled out by S. L. G. Beaufoy in theTown Planning Review, is the Well Hall Estate,

To do this it passes through the second element •••

planting. The hedgerow was left and not uprooted

with ~he result that it provides an extra designelement for the architect to deploy. Notice how

the footp~th passes through the hedge forming a

minor pleasure and how the foot ath changes char­

acter when once behind the hedge. Small things whichadd up to a pleasurable 1ntricacy.

Colour too is used to underline the design p~ttern,the projecting buildings being painted in differentcolours to the main terraces.

Townscape isseen here not asdecoration,not as a styleora deviceforfillingup empty spaces

withcobbles:itisseenas theartofusingraw materials-houses,treesand roads-to createalivelyand human scene.

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...••...

individ-

above, produces a never-endingbird of passage". Below is the

Chief architect NOEL TWEDDELL

Assistant architecte JOHN GRAHAUJOHN NEWTON

Landscape consultantSYLVIA CROVIE

19SJ!I, ~ElJ6R.AVr RO· 8A'SIl.•()~N NGW 'TOwN

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... stressed building obeys its own structural laws and the growing plantssuddenly reveal their own ...

Far right, low buildingand high trees. The birdin the gilded cage, acontrast of horizontal andvertical.

Right, high building andlow trees. The effect oftruncation can be used todisassociate.

The first consideration inworking out a schemewould concern the form ofcomposition. Trees arenot all green bath spongeson matchsticks, but haveastonishing variety.Across the bottom ofpages 169-170 are fourdifferent tree-and­building effects.

teet, his tight little world of stone and stucco hasspread out over lawn and street, pavement and post.Landscape has become part of architecture. Theneed for enrichment is clear from the introduction

by architects of natural stone walls, mosaics, muralsand polychromy, and also the use ofindoor and out­door plants, and, of course, trees. Today the art ofbringing trees and buildings together is based on thetree lending its richness to buildings, and on build­ings pointing out the architectural qualities of treesso that the two together make one ensemble.

In this sequence of three pictures we watch building and plant coming together.The naked vertically ...

Trees Incorporated

Trees and buildings have always borne a specialrelationship to each other because they provide thetwo standard. and accepted ways of punctuating thelandscape. As such they have to come to terms.Trees, apart from changing fashions in species, re­main the same whilst buildings continue to alterwith new techniques and functions. The alterationhas now become so great as to demand a reassess­ment of the relationship between the two. In thepast, buildings were conceived as complete in them­selves, they contained in massing and fa~ade avariety of richness, modelling, incident and texturewhich made them self-sufficient works of art. Todaythe architect seeks to reduce structure to a minimum

and the corollary of this is that little but a diagramis left to intrigue the eye. The changeover is shownin the photographs above left: all that was ancillaryto the building, even the sculpture, has been pushedout into the landscape-Adam and Eve expelledfrom the Garden (or rather house). Conclusion: land­scape becomes much more important to the archi-

168

171

shadow

Perhaps the most directand obvious example ofsurface treatment is thewall in shadow when thetree and building appearon the same plane.

screen

Here the effect of foliageis most important, all thevariety of leaves from thefeathery tamarisk to thepolished eucalyptus. Leavestranslucent or opaque,gigantic or tiny.

,1

.. echoing verticality: the fantastic candelabra is like a simile from thestructural laws of plants.

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Below right, high buildingand high trees. Peculiarlymoving and rhythmiceffect produced by theaccen tuation of the vertical

Below left, low buildingand low trees. A made-to­measure effect, small inscale and intimate incharacter.

geometryMore applicable to tropicalcountries, where trees andplants display a more directstructure. But the geometryof building combines withthe more fantastic geo­metry of biology.

line

The calligraphic effects ofline vary from the tor­tuousness of the plane tothe tracery of the elm.

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Free wallpaper is providedfor this house of glass inwhich the wall has dis­appeared to the extent thatit acts as a reflecting sur­face for the surroundingtrees.

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172 173

174

mobile

The effect of air currentson isolated branches andleaves can be likened tothe mobile against a plainwall.

sculpture

Here again there is scopefor the specimen, be itone kind or another. Itmay be chosen as onewould choose an objetd'arc.

Change of Level

The art of manipulating levels is a large part of theart oftownscape. Variations in the level of the groundcan occur either directly, as a result of the contoursof the site, or artificially, arising out of the needs theplanner has to meet. But however they are caused,one's reactions to levels are coloured, in the firstplace, by the peculiar sensitiveness that man has tohis position in the world.

Every place has its datum-line, and one may beon it or above it or below it. (There is an openingfor misconstruction here, since we tend to take ourown datum-line about with us as well.) To be abovedatum produces feelings of authority and privilege;to be below feelings of intimacy and protection.

These sensations imply a very direct relationshipbetween the observer and his environment. Theenjoyment of a feeling of authority and privilege isof quite a different order from the enjoyment ofother townscape effects-the sparkle of texture in awall or the shape of a letter-face on a shopfront. Inthe first case the observer is committed; in thesecond he can regard himself as more detached. Yeteach is a legitimate and desirable effect to aim at.

Objects acquire significance from their relation­ship to levels. The would-be imposing building isplaced on the top of a slope, just as the statue isplaced on a plinth. Hence the difficulty of designingbuildings on a slope: there is no datum and theresult is often ambiguity. Besides the obvious re­lationships between buildings and levels there aremany subtleties that can be exercised in practice; anexample of this is the use of the double order inSt Paul's Cathedral, which enables the building touse the skyline of London as a plinth.

The manipulation of levels has, of course, itspurely functional uses (see 'Hazards'), but even inthe many functional uses of levels there are caseswhere a choice can be made between alternative

solutions, where the problem cannot, honestly, besolved solely by reference to utilitarian conditions.Thus, for instance, one may wish to separate sitting

space from circulation space in a park or square.How to do it? By change of level, but whether toraise or lower the space can best be determined byreference to the psychological effect, already men­tioned, of being above or below datum.

Is there then any other aspect of levels besides thefunctional and the psychological? Yes, the thirdaspect is concerned with the purely visual, or objec­tive, qualities inherent in a world which for manyreasons refuses to be flat.

The simplest of all consists of seeing, of beingaware of, the undulation of the ground-the cultiva­tion of the sculptor's eye. How many places, which atfirst glance appear to be flat, reveal on closer in­spection the subtle rise and fall which gives a scenevitality? This can be the more easily observed ifthere is a datum-line against which it can bemeasured, or a tell-tale-the handrail (see the tell­tale, p. 180) which indicates what happens beyondthe immediate horizon.

The fact that a sloping surface is more in evidencethan a horizontal one can be put to good use in orderto create a sense of space, especially where there arecrowds. Visitors to the South Bank Exhibition will

remember the grassy slopes which provided such agood foil to the paving and remained green becauseno one could trample on them. This point introducesthe major one of changing level with elegance. Thetransition is often accompanied by a confusion ofunnecessary trimmings-railings and shrubs and thelike-obscuring the true qualities of geometry andhomogeneity. To regard a slope as vacant space, avisual vacuum which must be made to look pretty,shows precisely the same outlook as that whichdecorates the traffic roundabout with rockeries.

Changes of level should contribute somethingpositive to the townscape. The point has alreadybeen made that the floor is a unity which is too oftendisrupted, and it may be appropriate to start oursurvey of levels bearing in mind the thought thatalthough levels change we need not be their slaves.

175

above datum

Although the phraseologyof politics defines aperson's position in termsof being left or right orcentre, the more usual andnatural classification is upand down. We look up tosome people, we describeothers as having a lowmentality. The awarenessof relative height is en­grained in human nature;

below datum

whether its significancederives from the primitivehunt or battle strategy orfrom the doctrine of heavenand hell, it cannot bedenied that even in thehumdrum modern townawareness of level stimu­lates the citizen. Heightequals privilege, depthequals intimacy: the pointmade in the pictures here.

177

178

above datum

It isn't only the view youget from being high, it'sthe feeling of advantage,the feeling that you havegot into a position ofprivilege, a position that isjust as enjoyable if youlook at the view or ignoreit. It can be excitingly ex­

posed and exhilarating asin the South Bank look­

outs, top right, or moremodest, just a raised plat-

form, but a solid vantage,as on the jetty at Mine­head, top left. Surely thereis something very playfuland instinctive in this, forit is just the same as achild's love of walking onwalls. The lower two

pictures illustrate that bothplaces and buildingsassume significance bytheir position. The raisedsquare at Agde, bottom

left, at once appears some­how special, a place worthgoing to, and the unpre­tentious buildings inSalamanca, bottom right,situated on what is in fact

only a gentle slope, aredramatized by the treat­ment of channels and stepswhich serves to exaggeratethe change of level.

below datum

By contrast with the areaabove the general level, thearea below assumes an in­

timate and cosy character.It can be exploited func­tionally to give a sense ofseclusion where it is appro­

priate, as in the Frenchstreet in the drawingbelow; or socially as inthat experiment in physicalplanning known as theSouth Bank exhibition, top.How right this looks-thesmall urban place, madefriendly and concise by itslower floor.

179

180

the tell-taleWe have described thepsychological effect levelshave on us; here we areconcerned with the purelyvisual implications. And ofthese the first is the obser­vation of undulation, thevitality which it gives to ascene. Even the floor of aquad gains in interest bybeing laid to falls for drain­age. But the very fact thatoften the undulations areslight makes it the moreinteresting to have tell­tales, the true horizontalwhich exposes a slight

deviation or, as above,Lyme Regis, the railingwhich follows the contourand reveals what happensbehind the immediatehorizon. This is thesculptor's view.

changing with elegance

The sloping plane whichjoins two levels, beingunusable, is generally re­garded as a dead spot inthe scene and too oftenattempts are made toprettify it. But this examplefrom Stavoren, Holland,

opposite top, shows there isno need to camouflage thechange; the geometricalprecision, together withthe cohesion arising out ofuniform materials, showsthe virtue of the directsolution which achieves amonumental dignity. Adifferent kind of treatment,a fragment from Dart­moor, below, derives itscharm from the organicmoulding of earth and re­taining wall which is en­livened by white paint justwhere it is needed. Noth­ing to it? Just a rough wall?

182

Here and There

On a flat plain a house is built. It is an object stand­ing up on the flat surface. Inside the house there arerooms, volumes of space: but from the outside theseare not obvious. All we see is the object. Manyhouses built together form streets and squares. Theyenclose space and thus a new factor is added to theinternal volumes or spaces ... the outside spaces.Whereas internal volumes, rooms, are justified in thepurely functional sense of construction and shelter,there is no such forthright justification for externalspace/volume. It is accidental and marginal. Or is it?

In a purely materialistic world our environmentwould resemble a rock-strewn river, the rocks beingbuildings and the river being traffic passing them,vehicular and pedestrian. In fact, this conception offlow is false since people are by nature possessive.A group of people standing or chatting on the pave­ment colonize the spot and the passer-by has to walkround them. Social life is not confined to the interiorof buildings. Where people forgather, in marketplace or forum, there will therefore be some ex­pression of this to give identity to the activity.Market place, focal point, clearly defined promenadeand so on. In other words, the outside is articulatedinto spaces just as is the inside, but for its ownreasons.

We can therefore postulate an environment whichis articulated; as opposed to one which is simply apart of the earth's surface, over which ant-like peopleand vehicles are forever swarming and on to whichbuildings are plonked at random. Consequently, in­stead of a shapeless environment based on the prin­ciple of flow, we have an articulated environmentresulting from the breaking-up of flow into actionand rest, into corridor street and market place, alleyand square (and all their minor devolutions).

The practical result of so articulating the towninto identifiable parts is that no sooner do we createa HERE than we have to admit a THERE, and it is

precisely in the manipulation of these two spatialconcepts that a large part of urban drama arises. Onthe following pages of drawings are some pointsrelevant to this use of space in urban scenery.

here and there

Man-made enclosure, ifonly of the simplest kind,divides the environmentinto HERE and THERE. Onthis side of the arch, inLudlow, we are in thepresent, uncomplicated anddirect world, our world.The other side is different,having in some small waya life of its own (a with­holding). And just as theprow of a boat visible overa wall tells you of theproximity of the sea (vast,everlasting) so the churchspire turns simple en­closure, below left, intothe.drama of Here andThere, below right.

183

inside extends out

The corollary of this isthe expression of insidevolumes externally. In thecase of the public house,below, the normal streetfa~ade is interrupted bythe bulge which expressesthe function. Again, thesection through the shop­ping street shows how onone side, the left, we simplyhave shop windows whilston the right the awningsand costers' barrows forman enclosure which trans­forms the whole streetfrom an arid inside/outsidestatement to a compre­hensive and dramaticlinear marker.

t84

space continuity

Similarly but on a larger scale this view of Greenwichmarket, above, produces the effect of spatial continuity,a complex interlocking of volumcs in which the qualityof light and materials denies the concept ofoutside and inside.

public and private

Emphasizing this dIffer­ence are the various quali­ties anachcd to parts ofthe environment, qualitiesof character, scale, colour,etc. In this case the changeis from a public Here(Victoria Street) to aprivate or precinctualThere (WestminsterCathedral).

external and internal

A different aspect of spaceis shown at Kingstonmarket where two similarspatial systems run side byside. First the Market

_ Square, which is enteredby devious small roads,widens out into the busycentre which is heightenedby towers and statue. Thesky is the dome of thisoutdoor room. Directly offthe Market is the Wheat­sheaf Inn which also hasa central busy area ap­proached by a narrowcorridor. This central areahas its own sky, a glassdome. In summer thehouse is open from back tofront and in walkingthrough one is struck bythis unity of space­sequence.

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projectionSpace, being occupiable, provokes colonization.This reaction may be exploited by placing space toachieve the desired results. In this view of the Bankof England the lofty portico, left, elevates the spiritmore than a lofty solid building might.

functional space

What better way of emphasizing an event in thestreet such as a theatre, than by giving this functionits own space, below, which becomes alive andinformed by sparkle and conversation and tension.deflection

-Where a view is terminated by a building at right­angles to the axis then the enclosed space is com­plete. But a change of angle in the terminal building,as here in Edinburgh, below, creates a secondaryspace by implication. A space which you cannotsee but feel must be there, facing the building.

186

space and infinityThe effect of infinity is notnormally apparent in skyseen over rooftops. But ifsky is suddenly seen whereone might reasonably ex­pect to walk, i.e. at groundlevel, then there is an effectof infinity or shock.

captured spaceThe carved frets reach outand grip space, the slenderrail and posts enclose it,the pierced wall reveals it.Behind, the louvred open­ings reveal the next dimlayer of internal space andthe windows complete it.

~

Immediacy

It may be more prudent to have £50 in the bank thanin your pocket, but your pocket is more exciting.Water, sky and buildings are not affected by con­siderations of prudence. They are there to be en­joyed in the here and now or not at all. There is noBank of Visual Deposits. The directness of visualcontact between man and environment we term here

Immediacy, a quality which is on nodding termswith the Victorian practice of Opening Up. Thedifference between the two lies, of course, in thattownscape aspires to practices more organic than

Left, Blakeney; below, Iseo

was dreamed of by Victorian town-planning, whichtreated a town as a museum of separate exhibits, alantern-slide lecture. The key to our modern con­ception of towns cape lies in the fact, the simple butsurprising fact, that the items of the environmentcannot be dissociated the one from the other.

Further, the effects of juxtaposition are in them­selves as exciting as the objects juxtaposed-oftenmore so. It is in this light that we attempt to clothethe word Immediacy with its distinct and propermeaning.

189

water

Water provides the most obvious example becausethe transition between it and dry land offers thebiggest of all psychological contrasts. Towns thatlive by the sea should live on the sea in the sense

190

that the visible presence of the ocean should beapprehended from as much of the town as possible.(This doesn't mean always a full view of salt waterbut maybe the glint of reminder or even a chasm of

space closing the vista at the end of a street.)For the coastal town the sea is its raisoll d'erre

and even if the inhabitants live in cosy parlourswith their radio sets just like any family inland, it isnot an inland town. It is on the edge of the deep,it faces the constant but enigmatic horizon.

The same is true of the individual standing onthe quay, only for him the main tension is con­centrated on the demarcation line between land andwater. It's the emotional experience of this tensionwhich gives the sense of immediacy. This visual andemotional condition may be best achieved byomitting railings at the line of vision as at Blakeney,Norfolk, p. 188, where you may stand on the brinkor even lean out over the water against the concretemooring posts and glance down at the boats.Immediacy might be defined as a mental leaning­out-over.

A great deal of the impact of im~ediacy arisesfrom the degree of contrast, and at Iseo, Italy, p. 189,this can be observed. The hard, infinitely prolonged

edge of urban construction (fixed in urbanity bythe lamps and trees) butts directly against the sheetof water. Were all safely wrapped up with railingsand flowerbeds, the water would lose its depth andsparkle, the mountains would recede and the windwould not blow as clear.

But there are other combinations, there is the in­timate mingling of pleasure garden and ocean atLimone, Italy, above, where the two elements playwith each other by indentation and promontoriesand also by the change of levels: the sea bed rises,the ground is terraced; all views are exploited. Moreto the point of English conceptions is the directvisual connection with the rougher and more seriousjolly-jack-tar's sea, which must physically be heldback from the buildings. But the perspective of thehard and absence of railings gives immediate psycho­logical access to the deep, at Limone, left. Here thecobbles imitate wavelets both in their shape andshine, but are as hard as the waves are soft, a con­trast which heightens the sensation of proximity.

191

192

domesFrom the most obvious of

nature's examples to themost obvious of architect­ure's-from water to themonument. Wherever one

goes in Florence theDuomo is the InescapableMonument. It is alwaysthere closing the vista withimpressive sheer physicalbulk. It is an architectural

personality, a presence asjovial as a fat man in anovercoat, as magnetic andas outsi2e as a balloonwhich has made a forced

landing in somebody's backyard.

ENDPIECE

The message of this book is that there is a lot of fun and a lot of dramato be had from the environment. The reader may reply, 'Yes, but youhave combed the world for examples. Come and see where I live in theoverspill housing of Liverpool or Manchester, in the new suburbs ofParis or the gridirons of American cities. See what you can make ofthat.'

Agreed. But I have not combed the world just to make a picture bookthat can be picked up and put down. The examples are assembled for apurpose. The purpose is to expose the art of environment which, had itbeen understood and practised, could have prevented the disasters men­tioned. The reason for this book is to reach out to people like you to tryto show you what you are missing and to try to implant a growth point ofwhat could be.

Even if you lived in the prettiest of towns the message is still just asnecessary: there is an art of environment. This is the central fact ofTOWNS CAPE but it has got lost on the way, the environment gladiatorshave cast lots for it and parted it amongst them. On the one hand it hasdevolved into cobbles and conservation, and on the other it has hived offinto outrage and visual pollution. Neither of these, if! may be allowed tobreathe it, is germane to the art of environment. And consequently, tenyears later, it becomes necessary to start again. Now is the time to fashiona much more realistic tool. Thanks to the aforementioned gladiators thesubject is now not unknown. But it is linked to constraints and exhorta­tions. What is missing is the central power of generation. The art of put­ting the environment together has now to be more clearly defined, itsrules stated and its typical products familiarised over a broad field of thelay population. This will be the subject of my next book.

There is an attitude of mind which recoils from the systematisation ofaesthetics, believing that the bird on the wing can never be the samewhen caught. There is another attitude which inclines to the view thatunless you define your notes and establish a musical grammar you willnever be able to playa tune, even a simple tune let alone Mozart. Thisseems to me to be self-evident. At the risk of repetition let us get thefield of activity defined.

A. The environment is put together in two ways. First, objectively, bymeans of commonsense and logic based on the benevolent principles of

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health, amenity, convenience and privacy. This may be compared to Godcreating the world as someone outside and above the thing created. Thesecond way is not in opposition to this. It is a fulfilment of creation byemploying the subjective values of those who will live in this createdworld. Without disrespect this may be compared to God sending his Soninto the world to live as a human, find out what it is like and redeem it.Both these attitudes are complementary. To take a simple analogy, com­monweal lines of latitude which are parallel on the map diminish tovanishing points when observed by the individual. There is no moraldistinction involved, both observations are true. The truth is where youare. In these studies we shall not be concerned with objective values,which appear to be thriving. But we shall be concerned with the subjec­tive situation which is disturbing.

What we are witnessing is the extreme difficulty of switching from onekind oftruth to another, i.e. from the objective benevolence of the town­hall to personal response and experience especially when, in this madworld, there is usually so little time to adjust.

The main claim of TOWNS CAPE is that it has assisted in charting thestructure of the subjective world. For unle~&it is charted to what can youadjust? To opinions, to fashion or to personal morality? How difficultit is to adjust to vagueness and how time wasting.

B. From what base do we set out? The only possible base surely is toset down the ways in which the human being warms to his surroundings.To set down his affirmations. Not the grandiose views on Art or Godor the Computer, but the normal affirmations about our own lives. Itmay help to observe human response to living itself. The baby is born, ithas arrived, it is hungry, it cries, it sleeps. It is utterly helpless and utterlyarrogant. Later the growing child begins to discern things outside itself,some things are hot and others cold, sometimes it is light and sometimesdark, some big things move about singing. The youth grows up in thefamily and learns the do's and dont's of family life. When not to askquestions or stay up late, how to get on the right side of dad and so on.Still later as an adult he decides to make his own life, marries and becomesresponsible for the organisation of his family.

Our reponse to the environment is very much the same and can beexpressed in four affirmations:

1. I am Here, I am in this room, it is now. Awareness of space.2. They are There. That building is charming or ugly. Awareness of

mood and character.

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3. I understand Behaviour. We walk about inside a web of perspectivethat opens before us and closes behind us. There is a time structure.

4. I Organise. I can manipulate Spaces and Moods, knowing theirBehaviour, to produce the home of man.

All very fine and large. But what happens if we simply brush all thisto one side and get down to a bit of designing?

anti I. There is then nothing to belong to, nothing but waste-land.Non-homes stretching to the horizon and a continuum ofemptiness. The Expulsion from Eden.

anti 2. There is nothing to communicate with. We turn this way andthat but all is faceless and mindless. Nobody laughs or weeps.We hold out a hand but there is no response from the silentarmy.

anti 3. An environment as ignorant and clumsy as a crashed gearchange, scenery as catastrophic as the implications of a remandhome for girls.

anti 4. Chips with everything. Shove in a couple of silver birches.

c. Our first move in creating a system must surely be to organise thefield so that phenomena can be filed logically in an Atlas of the environ­ment. So far we have a column of affirmations on the left hand side.

Across the top we can set down the differing dimensions of the environ­ment in which they operate. First there is the physical world of length,breadth and height. Second is the dimension of time and third is thedimension of ambience. From these two breakdowns, vertical and hori­zontal, we can construct a grid or elementary Atlas which, if the premisesare sound, should be capable of immense growth.

Having arrived at the concept of an Atlas we now consider the fourthaffirmation, that concerned with organisation or manipulation. If weconsider the Atlas as a reference library of (visual) words then organisa­tion is the art of putting this word with that to make a lucid statementwhich is inherent in the particular design problem. And it is this glorioussense of communication that we all need. For God's sake say something!

You can see that it is no more complicated than a cookery book: firstyou list your ingredients, then you describe how they behave in heat orwater or whatever and then you put them together and there it is, a loaf.The only difference between the two is that most people have a lust foreating which justifies the apparently inexhaustible supply of cookerybooks whereas the environment is, at the moment, a lust-vacuum. Itisn't really surprising. The dialogue stopped when they killed off the

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environmental virtues of Victorian architecture and substituted a lot of

personal virtues such as truth, honesty and self-expression. You can seewhere that's got us, everybody is bored stiff. We've lost our audience.We have to join, separate, divide, conceal, reveal, concentrate, dilute,trap, liberate, delay and accelerate. Throw the ball about, get those stiffmuscles working. There is much to do.

Human life apart, there are few things more poignant than the still­birth of an idea in the human brain. Suddenly in the rich humus of themind an idea pushes up into the light of comprehension. The telephonerings, no we haven't got anthracite grains only nuts. And the idea has gone.Quite often gone forever. The Gods who threw the dice groan in frustra­tion. Our world is continually throwing up concepts, ideas and solutionsbut a vast amount withers and dies whilst the rest recedes into the papermountain. What is needed is a frame of reference in which these home­

less ideas can be housed: an environmental equivalent to 'Shelter', theBritish organisation that is privately tackling the housing problem. It ismy view that there is an incredible waste of fertility and that this shouldbe halted by the creation of a collecting, sorting and retrieval agency.

And so we end up with a box of concepts and a range of gambits,the whole being co-ordinated and internally self-justifying like a crystal.A weapon with which we can hack our way out of isolation and makecontact with the educators, with the mass media and so to the point ofthe story, the public.

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---

Absence, noticeable 73Adaptability 143, 149, see multiple useAdvantage 24, 75, 175-81, 213Advertisements, see publicityAedicule 36Aerial dominance 192Agriculture 58Animism 72Anticipation 49Arable landscape 58Arcades 21, 25Arcadia 57Archways 17, 18,29, 33, 35, 50, 54, 165, 183-6Articulation 13t, 182-7Awnings 24, 29, 32

Balconies, see terracesBarriers, see hazardsBlack and white, 'II, 96, see colour, whitewashBlock house, 30, see closureBluntness and vigour 66, 73Bollards 38, 41, 50-I, 76, 96, 99, 120, 122, 181, 188-<)

Bridges 36, 38, 87, 88-<)0, 148Building as sculpture 74Bypasses, see roads, traffic

Cafes, see restaurantsCalligraphy 84, 173, see traceryCanopies, see arcades, awnings, porches, sheltersCaptured space, 186, see nettingCasebook precedents 164-7Categorical landscape 57-6 ICentres, see town centresChange of level 20, 37-8,43,5°,54,70,72,75,81,90-2,

II 5-6, 126-7, 164-7, 175-81Churches, churchyards 17, 19, 25, 38, 40, 42-3, 45-{),

55, 66, 73, 77, 79, 82, 83, IIO, 122, 126, 136, 139,15°,151,184,192

Climate, English Ib2-3Closed vista, 43, see vistaClosure 30, 45, 47, 106-10, 137-8Colonisation, see possessionColour 73, 79, 85, 152-3, 155-{)1, 167Content 57-86Continuity 55, 184Contrast, see black and white, foils, juxtapositionCourtyards, see enclosure, pedestrian network, precinctsCross as focal point 1°3-5, see focal point

INDEX

Datum 175-81, see advantage, change of level, intimacyDecoration 31, 42, 44, 63, 65, 67, 69, 81, 83, 85,151-4,

t55-61, 169-71Defining space 32Deflection 43, 108, 187Density, see housing, prairie planning, sprawl, urbanityDispersal 132-<)Display, see decoration, handsome gesture, lettering,

propriety, publicity, wallDistortion 81, 154Division of vista 41, see vistaDomes, 18, 42, 185, 192Doors 43, 52, 72, 79, 157, 159

Enclaves 25, see enclosureEnclosure 25, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35-52, 97-102, 137-8,

162-3, 177, 179, 182-7English climate 162-3Entanglement 67, see intricacyExposure 69, 178, 188-<)0External and internal 185, see here and there

Fences 88-<), see hazardsFloodlighting, see illuminationFloor 23, 28, 36, 38, 49, 53, 54, 69, 75, 97-102, 120-2,

128-32, 134, see pedestrian networkFlowers, see gardensFluctuation 46, see undulationFluidity 24, 30Focal point 26, 1°3-5,Foils 77-86, 154, 168-74,Footpaths, see floor, pedestrian network

Fountains 54, <ee focal pointFunctional space 187Functional tradition 75, 87-<)6,

Garden$ 33, 35,41,64, 68-<),74,80,95,97-102, 123-7,173-4, I'll, see parks, trees

Gates 17,20,29,33,35,5°,52,78,Geometry 19, 69, 75, 173 see archwaysGiantism 81, 154Grandiose vista 41, see vistaGrass 33, 36, 68, 78, 97-9, 134 see gardens

Ha-ha, ho-ho, see hazardsHandsome gesture 42Hazards 56, 88-9, 123-7Hedges 59, 125, see hazards

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Here and there 18, 35-52, 182-7Hereness 29-34, see enclosureHousing 57, 86, II9, 121-2, 132-9, 164-7

Illumination 37, 71, 85, 96, 144-50, 151Illusion 3I, 70Immediacy 188-92Incident 44Indoor landscape 28Inescapable monument 192Industry 58, 60, 71, 76, 83, 160Infinity 50, 69, 186Inside extends out 184Insubstantial space 3IInterpenetration 31, 184Intimacy 69, 177-9, see enclosureIntricacy 65, 152-3Isolation 134, see exposure

Joining 53-6, 78, II5-8, see floor, pedestrian network,roads

Juxtaposition 60, 86, 169-70, see foils, immediacy

Kinetic unity 147

Lamp standards, see illuminationLandscape 34, 35, 36, 38, 48, 55, 57-QI, 64, 75, 82-3,

86, II9, 140-3Lavatories, public 95, 179Legs and wheels 120-2Lettering 93-4, 151-4Levels, see change of levelLighting, see illuminationLine of life I II-I9Linking and joining 53-Q, 78, 1I5-18, 122, s••

pedestrian network, roads

Maw 43, 52, 79Metaphor 70-1Metropolis 57Movement, see pedestrian network. serial vision, trafficMultiple use 76, II2-I8Mystery 51

Narrows 43, 45, 46, 109, 120, see archwaysNetting 32, 39, 186New towns 132-9, 164-7Nostalgia 68Noticeable absence 73

Occupied territory 23, see possessionOffices 40Opening up 189, see exposure, prairie planning, vistaOrnament, see decoration, sculpture, wallOutdoor publicity 151-4, see publicityOutdoor room 28-9, see gardens, squares

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Parking 96, II4, II7-I9, 129Parks 41, 48, 58, 70, 80, 97-102,123-7, see gardensPassages, see archways, narrows, pedestrian networkPaths, see pedestrian networkPavement, see floor

Pedestrian network 43, 54-5, 69, 92, see change oflevel, squares

Pinpointing 37, see punctuationPlace 21-56, 175-81Planting, see gardens, treesPlay areas, see enclosure, gardens, intimacy, squaresPorches, porticoes 24, 39, 79, 82, 108, 170-1, 184-7Position 21-56, 175-81Possession 21-8

Power lines 58, 140-3Prairie planning 132-9Precincts 27, 79, 120-2, 179, see enclosure, pedestrian

network, squares

Projection 17,44, 107, 164-7, 187Promenades, see change of level, immediacy, line of life,

pedestrian network, watersidePropriety 65, 144-50, 155Public and private 184Public houses 47, 66, 108, 165, 184-5Publicity 47,151-4Punctuation 26, 30, 35, 45Pylons 58, 140-3

Railings 88, 97, 1I5, 124, 173, 180, 191, see hazardsRamps 20, 91, 180-1, 190Recession 44, 47-8Relationship 9-10, 78 and passimRestaurants 28, 56, 100, II8, 163, see public housesRoad 27, 45, 53, 76, 78, 106-10, 132-9, see floor

Rooftops 40, 74,163Roundabouts, see focal point, trafficRule of thumb 140-3

Scale 79-81, 144-6, 154, 169-70Screened vista 4 1-2, see vistaSculpture 36, 7°,72-3, 74, 81,99, 101, 154, 168, 174,

see focal point, significant objectSeaside, see watersideSeats 22, 23, 25, 28, 38, 84, 86, 95, roO-I, 162-3, 176Secret town 64, see enclosure, here and thereSeeing in detail 63, 156Segregation, see bridges, hazards, pedestrian network,

precincts, squares, trafficSerial vision 17-20,55,106-10Shelters 162-3, 236, 273, see enclaves, possessionShops 42, 62, 65, II8, 134, 136, 151-4, 184-5

see letteringSignificant object> 73Silhouette 40, 145Sky, see infinity, rooftopsSloping ground, see change of levelSpace and infinity 186

.....•••...

Space continuity 184Sprawl 58, 60Squares 41, 56, 57, 64, 77, 79, 97-ro2, 178-9, 183-6

see enclosure, focal point, hazards, pedestriannetwork, precincts

Steps, stairs 90, 92, II 5-6, IW. 176, 180-1see change ofleve1

Street furniture 38, 41, 50, 67, 70, 73, 74,83,84,86,95,see seats, focal point

Street lighting 144-50, see illuminationStructures 87Subtopia27Suburbs, see categorical landscape, housing, prairie

planning, sprawl, subtopiaSurface, see colour, texture, thisness, wall, whitewash

Taming with tact 86Tell-tale 72, 180Terraces 24, 32, 56, 75, 84. II3-4, 136, 178, 191

see advantage, housing, pedestrian network

Texture 92-3, see floor, thisness, wallThereness 34, see here and thereThis is that, see illusionThisness 62-76, see seeing in detail, significant object,

walls

Towers 37, 38, 45, 55, 73, 101, 169-7°, 183-4Town 57Town centres 55

Townscape 133Tracery 65, 82, 173, see lineTraffic 27, 59-60, 76, 104-5, 120-2, 167, 182Trees 22, 25, 26, 32, 36, 41, 56, 57-8, 60, 64, 68, 70, 78,

8o, 82-3, 97-103, II8, 122, 125, 127, 165-6, 168-74Trim 36, 55, 56, 61, 68, 75, 95, 175, 181, see hazardsTruncation 37, 38, 50

Undulation 46,165,175-81Urban categories 57Urbanity 57, 64,137-9,189

Verticals, see focal point, punctuation, towersVigour 66, 73,151Viscosity, 24,Vista 20, 41, 42, 43, 133, see closure

Walls 22,31,33, 34,49,51,55,62,63,75,79,82-3,84-5,91,92-3, 155-61, 163, 174, 178, 181

Water, waterside 24, 39, 48, 56, 61, 64, 68-70, 72, 76, 86,87, 88, 91, 99, III-I9, 148, 181, 188-91

Weather 162-3White peacock 68Whitewash 34, 62, 74, 91, 96, II3-4, 155-61, 181Wild country 58Windows 28, 62, 66, 68, 72, 81, 82, 156, 161, 172

Zoning 27, 120-2, see categorical landscape, precincts

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